Irish Regulator Promises to Keep ‘Annoying’ Bankers

(Bloomberg) --

Ireland's central bank governor has this message for bankers frustrated by the regulator's investigations: get used to it.

Nearly a month after KBC Group NV Chief Executive Officer Johan Thijs bemoaned the Irish central bank's probe into a mortgage overcharging scandal, governor Gabriel Makhlouf told a parliamentary committee in Dublin that it would continue.

Thijs “described our work as annoying and one of the things I can tell you that he may regret is the fact that we may continue to be annoying,” he said. “I'm absolutely determined to make sure that the practices, the cultures and behaviors of the past are not repeated.“

The KBC boss apologized for his comments, first reported by Bloomberg News, where he described the central bank probe as “annoying” and urged the regulator to “turn the page”. His words hit a nerve in a country that is still wary of the financial sector more than a decade after the financial crisis crippled the economy there, with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar among those who condemned his comments.

To contact the reporter on this story: Peter Flanagan in Dublin at pflanagan23@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ambereen Choudhury at achoudhury@bloomberg.net, Dara Doyle

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