Sean FitzPatrick Trial: There was absolutely nothing to hide with these loans

Tom Lyons draws on exclusive new documents which outline in the banker’s own words how he ended up sitting in a courtroom for 126 days

Sean FitzPatrick borrowed from the bank he headed, Anglo Irish

‘I’m taking the stand’

It was an awkward moment. In the lift from the canteen to a courtroom in the Criminal Courts of Justice, I bumped into Sean FitzPatrick. We had fallen out some years earlier, after I had published a book with Brian Carey entitled The FitzPatrick Tapes.

FitzPatrick, who had cooperated with the book for many months, had rejected it in the end. The book was not intended as an attack ...