Ireland's corporate regime; non-enforcement

On Jan 8, 2008, I played for Berkeley against Oakland in the annual squash league match. My opponent was an amiable, very bright African-American called Preston Dufauchard. He was at the time the California commissioner of corporations;

http://calcorporatelaw.com/tag/commissioner-preston-dufauchard/

Direct link

We had a great chat, and a very sporting game. He mentioned the difficulties he was having with companies registered in Ireland. I told him that I would put him in touch with Irish director for corporate enforcement, Paul Appleby, with whom I had been in frequent contact;


The apparently eternal Irish music scam

Appleby did not reply to Preston; then again Appleby has never, in over a decade, succeeded in successfully prosecuting anyone. Matt Cooper commented thus;

Appleby has NO successful prosecutions after a decade on the job

I believe this to be too gentle. As it happened, Appleby eventually gave evidence in federal court in the USA that it was ok to pay a dissolved company - this we found out during the discovery period of the following case, in which Appleby and the Irish state ended up on the losing side as we won a landmark battle for all Irish musicians;

A victory for musicians, loss for the Irish state

Everything is consistent with the narrative that Appleby was put in place to ensure that a bunch of criminals could continue their nefarious ways. Indeed, the exasperation Judge Kelly has shown with him indicates that Appleby dragged out the Anglo investigation – the biggest financial scandal in Irish history – as long as he could, and then announced a surprise resignation so that his hapless successor would get the blame. It says a lot for Ireland's current government that the senior minister was inclined to let him away with this.