Mr. Jonathan Sugarman:

First and foremost, I am a banking professional. I would never discuss the business of the bank I work for with anyone working for any other bank. Having said that, let us consider item 2 in the documentation before the committee. It is an article about me written in the Süddeutsche Zeitungin Bavaria. I wish to draw the attention of committee members to the second paragraph on the second page. It states that although the Irish financial regulator audited the bank shortly after my resignation, it did not seem to draw any significant conclusion. The article goes on to say that a top manager of another international bank in Dublin corroborated Roland K.'s story, and I am Roland K. in this story. The article states that the top manager knows Roland to be a scrupulous and very conscientious manger and that he has seen evidence of the breaches at the bank.