Republican News · Thursday 14 March 2002

Wanted - scapegoats please

Today, the board of AIB will release the findings of the first report into the activities of alleged "rogue trader", John Rusnak. The business news media in both Ireland and internationally has had an interesting focus on the outcomes of the report. Rather than focus solely on the massive system failure that led to one worker being able to speculate with billions of pounds unchecked over a four-year period, we are playing a guessing game of who on the boards of AIB or its US subsidiary Allfirst will have to fall on their swords.

It seems that the stock markets are looking for a sacrificial victim to symbolically punish AIB for letting them down. The media have been shuffling the pack, offering us a variety of juicy options that stretch right up to AIB Group chief executive Michael Buckley.

What they haven't done is ask the simple question of could this happen again, not just at AIB but at any of the other financial institutions where hundreds of thousands of Irish workers have their savings and more importantly their pension funds invested?

The answer is yes, it could happen again. It doesn't matter what the report by former US currency controller, Eugene Ludwig, concludes, because speculative financial trading on stock, currency and commodity markets is continuing and will continue unabated.

Right now, there are advertisements all over the 26 Counties looking for savers to commit themselves to long term investments in Special Savings Investment Accounts. The AIB screw up is not a one off and needs not just an investigation by AIB but by the Irish banking regulators and the government.

Why have they been so silent on the AIB fiasco? This is not monopoly money but the accumulated savings of thousands of ordinary households at stake. We need an end to the silence. AIB and all other Irish financial institutions that are involved the same type of market speculation must be made to come forward and account for how well they are minding our money.