[JURIST] Three former Irish bankers were sentenced to prison on Friday for conspiring to defraud customers and investors during the 2008 banking crisis. In what was Ireland’s longest criminal trial ever (74 days), former CEO of Irish Life and Permanent plc, Denis Casey, and two former executives of Anglo Irish Bank Corp., John Bowe and Willie McAteer, were convicted [Bloomberg report] for their role in collapsing a bank during the financial crisis. According to the court, the three had created a false impression of Anglo Irish Bank’s financial security through creating a 7.2-billion-euro circular payment [Reuters report]. Anglo Irish was liquidated in 2013, the last year of a sovereign bailout starting in 2010. Casey was sentenced to two years and nine months, Bowe was sentenced to two years, and McAteer was sentenced to three years and six months.

Anglo Irish has been the center of controversy, its collapse thought to have been the main driving force behind the Irish banking crisis. In March two former Anglo Irish executives, Tiarnan O’Mahoney and Bernard Daly,had their convictions for furnishing false information and conspiring to defraud quashed [BN report] by the Court of Appeal [official website]. In October Anglo Irish’s former CEO David Drumm was arrested [Guardian report] in Massachusetts on an extradition warrant alleging forgery, conspiracy to defraud, and false accounting. Drumm had moved to Boston two years after the economic crash in Ireland and attempted to declare bankruptcy, owing more than $11 million in loans he had borrowed from the bank. His application for bankruptcy was denied and was accused of lying and acting fraudulently in declaring bankruptcy.