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Ex-chairman of Anglo Irish Bank cleared of fraud

Former chairman and chief executive of Anglo Irish Bank Sean Fitzpatrick leaves the Criminal Courts of Justice in Dublin, Ireland after a hearing at the start of his trial on February 5, 2014

The former chairman of the collapsed Anglo Irish Bank was found not guilty Wednesday of providing illegal loans to support the bank's share price, after an 11-week trial.

Sean Fitzpatrick, 65, was cleared of providing unlawful financial assistance to 10 customers of the bank to buy shares in the lender in July 2008.

The bank went bust shortly afterwards, leaving the Irish economy close to collapse.

The jury will resume deliberations on Thursday on two other former executives of the bank: Patrick Whelan, 51, and 63-year-old William McAteer. They deny the same charges.

The loans-for-shares deal was part of a plan concocted in 2008 to unwind former billionaire Sean Quinn's stake after it emerged Quinn had built up a secret 28 percent holding in the bank.

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The bank feared Quinn would be forced to dump his sizeable stake in an uncontrolled manner causing the bank's share price to plummet.

The prosecution argued that the loans breached company law because the scheme was arranged with the intention of affecting its own share price.

Ten of the charges against each of the defendants related to a group of ten major customers of the bank, known as the Maple Ten, who were lent money.

McAteer and Whelan also face six additional charges each relating to members of Sean Quinn's family who were lent money to buy shares. Last week, the judge directed that Fitzpatrick be cleared of the six charges related to the Quinn family.

Anglo, mostly a commercial and business bank, lent recklessly during Ireland's Celtic Tiger years and required billions of euros in state funding when the real estate market collapsed.

In 2008, nearly 30 billion euros ($34 billion) of taxpayers' money had to be pumped into the bank to prevent it from going under.

The following year, the Irish government nationalised the bank when further cash was needed to prop up the failed lender.

Renamed the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, Anglo was liquidated February 2013, closing what Prime Minister Enda Kenny called "a sad and tragic chapter" in Irish economic history.

Fitzpatrick thanked his family and his legal team during a brief statement read to reporters after the verdict.

"I would especially like to thank the women and the men of the jury who found me not guilty of all charges."

"I now simply ask that the courtesy extended to me and my family during this trial by the media be maintained and the privacy of my family, which has been intruded on for the past six years, will now cease."

The jury will resume its deliberations at 0930 GMT Thursday.