Why They Should Not Be Arrested Pt.1

Matthew Tannin of Bear Stearns being arrested. A jury later acquitted him. (Copyright: San Francisco Sentinel)

This is the first in a series of notes concerning a topic on which I suspect that many readers will, at least initially, disagree with me.

I will be writing in an Irish context, and specifically in relation to the Irish banking sector, but the points that I plan to make can be applied not only to other sectors but also outside Ireland.

It may be useful to begin by noting this: for approximately the last four years (since solicitor Michael Lynn fled the jurisdiction), I have regularly - in public (on a series of internet fora) and in private - sought assistance, and/or offered to assist others, to privately prosecute any one of a series of notorious alleged miscreants, starting with Mr Lynn himself. All of these objects of public obloquy have in common that their (alleged) misdeeds are associated with Ireland's drastic change of economic circumstances since circa 2007.

No Takers

Although I have not given up, and the offer is still open, I have had no "takers". Not one. Zero.

This is surely very odd, considering that nearly everyone with whom I have ever discussed the matter - and that includes dozens of lawyers - is convinced that our current economic Armageddon is the result of criminal mis-behaviour (their emphasis) by a large collection of people belonging to one or more of the following groups:

bankers, regulators, politicians, auditors, economists, lawyers, auctioneers, accountants, civil servants, builders and property developers.

Yet, these discussions have failed to generate a single candidate who could be prosecuted for an identifiable crime !

It seems to me that this failure should be at least as difficult to understand as the absence of public prosecutions to date. This series of posts is my attempt to elucidate the issue.