Fugitive financier Viktor Kozeny has been issued six Irish passports and at least two others from the Czech Republic and Venezuela, according to records shown to The Irish Times.
Mr Kozeny (42), who bought Irish citizenship under the controversial "passports for investment" scheme, is currently in prison in the Bahamas, after a judge questioned whether he was holding back information on the number of passports he has.
He disclosed five of the Irish passports to a Bahamas court last Thursday. However, his lawyer has since said that Mr Kozeny's mother found a sixth Irish passport at his Bahamas home, as well as a Czech passport issued in 1994.
A bail hearing today will decide whether Mr Kozeny will be released while fighting extradition to the US on multimillion-dollar bribery and theft charges.
However, magistrate Carolita Bethel has warned that she wants full disclosure of all Irish passports held by Mr Kozeny, who has been dubbed "The Bouncing Czech" by the international press.
Records reveal that Mr Kozeny has six Irish passports dating from 1995 - the year he became an Irish citizen by investing €1.27 million in a software company under the then government's "passports for investment scheme".
The first passport was issued on April 28th, 1995, and expired on April 26th, 2005. The second was issued on January 18th, 1996, and expired on April 26th, 2005.
Mr Kozeny showed a photocopy of a third Irish passport to Ms Bethel which was issued on February 6th, 1997. A fourth was issued on April 8th, 1998, but Mr Kozeny's lawyer Philip Davis was unable to say when it expired.
A fifth passport, which was issued in July 2000, will remain in date until November 9th, 2009.
Mr Davis told the court that a sixth passport also exists but has since expired.
He said Mr Kozeny now had two valid Irish passports, and added that five of Mr Kozeny's 32-page passports had been used up with stamps from various countries he visited.
Mr Kozeny was indicted in New York this month for allegedly masterminding a multimillion-dollar scheme to bribe officials in Azerbaijan's state-owned oil company during a fraudulent privatisation scheme in which US investors lost tens of millions of dollars.
Bahamas prosecutor, Francis Cumberbatch, will oppose bail at this morning's hearing. He has previously argued in court that Mr Kozeny seemed to be able to get passports "almost at will".
Mr Kozeny was arrested in the Bahamas early this month after New York prosecutors indicted him on charges of bribing Azerbaijani government officials with $11 million of US investors' money. He had previously been indicted in New York for organising the allegedly fraudulent privatisation.
He is also wanted in his native Czech Republic for organising another fraudulent privatisation, in which 80,000 small investors collectively lost hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Government recently indicated that it would introduce legislation to ensure that the "passports for investment" scheme would never be reintroduced.
Meanwhile, the president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, has become embroiled in a bitter political dispute about his alleged friendship with Mr Kozeny.
An incensed Mr Klaus posted a statement on his personal website this week to rebut claims made by his former privatisation minister, Tomas Jezek, who said Mr Klaus and Mr Kozeny were close friends.
"Mr Tomas Jezek has recently been repeatedly telling the whole nation via different media outlets that Viktor Kozeny and I were pals. That is not true. I have patiently explained and continue to explain that I only met Mr Kozeny once in my life, for 15 minutes in the finance ministry building," Mr Klaus wrote on his website, according to the Czech newspaper, Pravo.
Mr Klaus said he would not be provoked into making similar allegations against Mr Jezek, who, he said, was his best friend since primary school. “Because of that, our country’s citizens will never hear any statement from me about Tomas Jezek.”
