Anglo-Irish Bank did not represent a systemic risk to the Irish economy, it wasn’t a high street bank like AIB or the Bank of Ireland. If it had been allowed to go the way of Lehmans the only losers would have been shareholders and bondholders. The Irish state stepped in and nationalised a bank that was basically run by crooks lending to property speculators. The Irish people are taking losses that should rightly have been shouldered by bondholders.

Every child in Ireland is being bequeathed a huge debt at birth to protect the interests of foreign, mainly German, bondholders – why? Guido was once a bond trader, it was always understood that sometimes the bond issuer defaults. That is the risk investors take.

So why is Dublin’s political establishment so keen to protect foreign investors at the expense of future generations? Guido has obtained the list of foreign Anglo-Irish bondholders as at the close of business tonight. These are the people whom Dublin’s politicians really seem to care about:

Between them they hold Anglo-Irish bonds with a face-value of €4,034,756,880. Shouldn’t they take the hit rather than future generations of Irish taxpayers? Capitalism is a system of profit and loss, they took the risk of investing in Anglo-Irish Bank. Is the Irish government under pressure from the European Central Bank in Frankfurt to protect German investors?

Humiliated LibDem MP Mike Hancock was arrested last week for indecent assault after he pursued a mentally ill constituent with a barrage of dinners, presents and late night text messages.  He’s been bailed until January.

The police got involved after the young, yet unnamed, lady’s care staff raised the alarm. Hancock has not denied he was contacting the girl, but claims that he was only trying to cheer her up. Guido has had a glance over the text messages he was sending her, and he’ll let you decide if this was merely an attempt to make someone feel better or something more:

• “You are and believe me i know what i am talking about u r very and i miss you sexy XXX” (15.01 June 14, 2010) With this record, Guido is sure he does…

• “Please give me a chance you never know my princess XXX” (23.33 April 18, 2010) Just trying to cheer her up!

• “Thankyou as long its not a wet one XXX” (23.27 May 27, 2010)

Guido hates to think what that last one is referring to, but given the time of night he has a couple of ideas…

Guido has been given documents coming from inside Anglo Irish Bank’s Treasury Department dating back to 1997 which strongly suggest there was a board level approved conspiracy to over-charge corporate customers. The scale of the fraud was massive and it may have contributed up to 10% of the now nationalised bank’s profits.

The Anglo-Irish Bank’s fraud comes from overstating the DIBOR base rate on which customer’s loans were calculated. DIBOR is the Dublin Interbank Offered Rate, calculated and published daily like LIBOR, it was set in stone and used by all Irish banks as the basis for settlement of trades and financial transactions before they joined the Euro.

Essentially Anglo-Irish lied to customers as to what that the real base rate was by adding between 1/4% to 1/3% to the official underlying rate, then they added the usual banker’s spread that they will have agreed contractually with their corporate customers.

Guido’s source says that inside Anglo-Irish the false rate quoted to borrowers was known internally as “TIBOR” after Tiarnan O’Mahoney, the Director and Chief Operating Officer to whom Des Whyte, the treasury manager who prepared the figures, reported. Sources say that the “TIBOR” version of “DIBOR” was not used with sophisticated money market customers who would have queried the rate.

Guido has done some back of an envelope calculations based on the bank’s 1999 Annual Report. The customer loan book is reported to have been €5.7 billion (IR£4.4 billion). Assuming that only half the clients were over-charged the average of 30 basis points the bank will have made an extra €8.6 million, (IR£6.6 million) on the bottom line. That was some 10% of the bank’s reported profits.

According to a source the fiddle continued throughout the late 90s into the early half of the next decade as Anglo-Irish’s loan book grew on the back of the Celtic tiger. Customers could have been ripped off by as much €100 million.

N.B. Guido has documentation to back up this story – if the Dublin authorities want it…

UPDATE : There was an error with the graphic illustration above earlier which has now been corrected to show the correct corresponding date.

This week there is a copy of Dennis Kavanagh and Philip Cowley’s comprehensive “The British General Election 2010″ up for grabs for the wittiest caption comment.

Usual rules apply, competition closes midday Saturday…

When Tory whip Bill Wiggin first came under the expenses spotlight Dave was put under pressure to sack him. The Prime Minister told GMTV on the 21st May 2009:

“He [Wiggin] has given us every assurance that every penny he claimed should have been claimed and it does look like it is – look it’s a bad mistake – but it looks like it’s an honest mistake and he was not claiming money that he wasn’t entitled to. Now if he was, that would be totally different and he would be out of the door…”

Yesterday the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner ruled that Wiggin was guilty of a “serious” breach of the rules for claiming thousands of pounds in expenses “he did not actually incur”. He has been told to pay back £4,000. So now time for Dave to crack the whip and show him the door…

With invoices being trawled, coppers called and MPs still insisting they have done nothing wrong, it could be June 2009 all over again. With MacShane being referred to the Yard yesterday it has also emerged that Tory whip Bill Wiggin claimed thousands of pounds for costs he “did not actually incur”. Another way of putting that is “fraudulently”. Back in the day Wiggin defended his over zealous expense claims by saying “I think people need to realise we are but human”. Yes, greedy ones. The mind boggles as to how it wasn’t seen fit to pass on his file along with MacShame…

With MacShane and Margaret Moran both being looked into by the cops, the total number of Labour MPs under investigation or facing trial is now at six, but there seems to be some discrepancies in those cases that the Met are picking up. One of the key allegations against Margaret Moran is her dodgy receipts. Amongst various housing decorations she also claimed £130 from her communications allowance for Labour Christmas cards. The claim was rejected and so she resubmitted the invoice calling the cards “Constituency Surgery Cards” and Fees office duly coughed up. A trick that sounds very familiar.

Back in March Guido reported:

“Having had over a grands worth of greeting card receipts rightly rejected from his Communications Allowance claims, Khan then went back to the printers and had them create a new receipt, for the same amount, but without the birthday cards itemised on them.”

Khan’s printer “Public Impact” is run by Labour Party affiliates and he told John Lyon he “couldn’t remember the complaint”. Which is convenient. A report was submitted to Scotland Yard who have, as of yet, not ruled concluded the investigation. Perhaps in the light of their look at Moran, they might like to clamp down on other MPs with equally dodgy receipts…

Having had the best part of three months off you would expect MPs to have got all their holidaying out of their system until Christmas. But then not every MP is part-time like the multi-millionaire green investment guru Tim Yeo. When he’s not whoring-out the Parliamentary estate for his “green investor” friend’s benefit, he’s hypocritically arguing that wind farms should be built, but not in his pretty constituency. All the hard work he has put in – Parliament has been back a week – has forced Yeo to apparently take a golfing holiday to the States. He’s clearly looking for more anecdotes for his golf based after dinner speech service and FT Golf column…

But come on Tim, what about your carbon footprint? A business class flight across the Atlantic generates 3.56 tonnes of carbon per person. Nigel Bennett, Yeo’s local LibDem opponent said “this really goes to show once again that Yeo is a below par MP”.  When Guido called to confirm this story the painfully posh assistant in Yeo’s office wasn’t very helpful: “I don’t think Guido Fawkes is a very nice friend to Mr Yeo so we won’t be commenting.”