A challenge to the inquiry into the Ansbacher deposits - the secretive, complex web of financial transactions set up by the late Des Traynor - has opened in the Four Courts. Colm Keena reports

Some information about the two people who are making an anonymous application in the courts regarding the Ansbacher deposits emerged yesterday.

First, they are in agreement with the inspectors regarding the facts the inspectors have discovered in relation to their affairs.

Second, they are completely at odds with the inspectors concerning the findings the inspectors have made based on those facts.

On the face of it this seems odd but the so-called Ansbacher deposits constitute, in fact, a secretive and complex web of financial dealings orchestrated and designed by the late Mr Des Traynor.

Ansbacher (Cayman) Ltd, formerly Guinness & Mahon Cayman Trust Ltd, operated in secret in this jurisdiction, accepting deposits and processing withdrawals as well as providing secret backing for loans taken out from Guinness & Mahon, the Irish bank.

The process of hiding his activities and evading the foreign exchange controls then in existence, drove Mr Traynor to get involved in complicated transactions, the details of which are only scantily recorded.

Mr Eoghan Fitzsimons SC, for the Director of Corporate Enforcement, Mr Paul Appleby, told the court that the two applicants are simply named in the report. Nothing is being said in the report which would damage their good names, he said. This seems to indicate that the inspectors intend naming the two people but do not intend stating that any offence may have been committed by them. In other instances it is expected the inspectors will point to possible offences which may have been committed. Tax evasion is likely to figure largely in this regard.

Presumably, the inspectors have reason for believing in the case of the two applicants, that they were not customers of the bank for the purpose of hiding their affairs from the Revenue.

The inspectors were appointed on foot of an application to the High Court from the Tánaiste, Ms Harney, under section 8 of the Companies Acts 1990. Mr Michael Collins SC, for the two applicants, says he wants to argue that the court had no power under the section to instruct the inspectors to name customers of Ansbacher Cayman.

The act, he said, was designed to allow investigations of companies, not of their customers.

Mr Collins, on behalf of his clients, said that simply to be named in the Ansbacher report would be enough to damage his clients' standing. Irrespective of the findings made in the report, the simple fact of being named in it would be enough to damn those named. Those listed would become associated in the public mind with the worst practices of the Republic in the 1970s and 1980s, he said.

He said there was a constitutional stipulation that justice be administered in public, but also a constitutional right to have your good name protected. When two constitutional rights were in conflict, the court had the right to decide which one had precedence.

IN this instance, he argued, his clients should be allowed make their case in court without their identity being disclosed. However, Mr Fitzsimons said they should not be given such a "favour" by the courts.

If granted to the two anonymous applicants, why should it not be granted to any and every person charged with a criminal offence but not yet found guilty? The two applicants were "light years" away from the difficult position a person wrongly accused of a criminal offence found him or herself in.

Argument resumes today. Mr Justice McCracken will have to make a ruling on the initial issue of anonymity. It seems if he rules against the applicants, they will not want to identify themselves and make their main application. They may appeal a negative ruling on the anonymity issue to the Supreme Court. If they lose the anonymity issue, the Attorney General and Mr Appleby may also appeal to the Supreme Court. The list of Ansbacher names is not due to be made public in the near future, it would seem.

The inspectors are: Judge Sean O'Leary of the Circuit Court; Mr Michael Cush SC; barrister Ms Noreen Mackey; and accountant Mr Paul Rowan. As well as investigating the affairs of about 200 people, they have also been involved in proceedings in the Channel Islands and the Cayman Islands. The legal process involved in these investigations is tortuously slow.

For some of the powerful and wealthy figures who are the focus of this investigation, money is not a problem. A delay in the publication of the report would probably be welcomed: the deletion of all names from the report would be a dream come true.