Former Wilmington Trust President Robert Harra was sentenced to to six years in prison on federal charges of conspiring to not report loan problems at the bank, The Associated Press reported.
He is the first of four former executives of the bank to be sentenced this week. David Gibson will also be sentenced on Monday, followed on Wednesday by William North and Kevyn Rakowski.
The defendants pleaded not guilty to the charges and claimed they did not knowingly conceal the problem loans that eventually took down the financial institutional institution.
A number of prominent Delaware leaders went to bat for Harra in the pre-sentencing phase of the case. Harra was active in community activities and had chaired the Board of Trustees at Wesley College, Dover.
Wilmington Trust had been the largest retail bank in the state and also had a large wealth management and trust business.
The bank and trust company was sold to Buffalo-based M&T for $300 million, a fraction of its value, prior to the disclosure of the problem loans
M&T, which was previously listed as a defendant in the case settled with the federal government and reached an agreement in a class action shareholder lawsuit.