Former Wilmington Trust President gets 6 years on bank loan charges

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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.