Ballybollox, Eire - An ingenious scam by a dodgy Irish bank was revealed today at a whistleblower's industrial tribunal hearing.
Shergar Bank & Truss Corp is accused of forming a joint venture bank with the UK Post Office whose 2.2 million accounts held more than £10 billion in 2004.
It then tried to claim ownership of the Post Office cash stash via the new subsidiary, the British Shergar Friendly Society & Co, after going horribly into the red because of other penurious scams.
The tribunal today heard the deal would have meant the British taxpayer forking out an additional £85,000 compensation to each swindled depositor on top of the successful £10 billion heist.
But the daft plot fell apart when the Irish financial regulator finally twigged that Shergar Bank was just trying to leverage itself out of a default situation with actual losses approaching £100 billion.
"Somebody at an Isle of Dogs, Barking, sub-post office got a whiff of it and tipped off the City of London Fraud Squad," Seamus O'Bally, defence counsel to the sacked whistleblower commented today.
The creation of the entirely spurious Irish sister bank in 2004 was widely accredited to Peter Mandelson, former UK Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and subsequent EC Trade Commissioner.
The tribunal is expected to publish more details of the plot on Monday.
