Whistle-blower denounces KBC Ireland’s practices

A small storm has begun brewing over a comment made in a VRT documentary by Jonathan Sugarman, aka WhistleblowerIRL, who has been called the most significant whistle-blower in Ireland, writes David Malone on his blog. In the documentary, he mentioned, as an example of the lack of financial regulatory oversight in Ireland during the bubble years, the Belgian bank KBC. As Sugarman reminds viewers, this month KBC Belgium had to give KBC Ireland another €100 million to bail it out. To illustrate how KBC had got itself into the state where it is still being bailed out by the Belgian taxpayer via its parent company, he told how he had been given a mortgage by KBC in Ireland.  “When I looked at the forms I had to fill in for KBC Ireland, it was a joke,” he said. “I could have said I was Mickey Mouse and I work in La La Land and I would still have a million euro to buy a house which maybe was worth €200,000. Did anybody ask questions? No. The bank is growing. Where’s the problem?” What he didn’t say in the interview is that the bank did not value the property he was buying before giving him the mortgage: it looked at the house next door and guessed. Sugarman has also been interviewed about problems within the Irish banking sector by Australian and Greek television and the Greek newspaper I Kathimerini (which is affiliated with the New York Times).