Lodgements totalling £660,000 were made to an account linked to Mr Charles Haughey in the six-month period following his re-election as Taoiseach in February 1987, the Moriarty tribunal was told yesterday.
Almost half of the funds came from companies associated with the multi-millionaire property developer, Mr John Byrne, including a £50,000 transfer on February 18th, 1987, the day after the general election.
The lodgements were made to an Amiens Securities account at Guinness & Mahon bank, which has already been linked to payments to Mr Haughey.
Among the lodgements were 11 cash payments totalling £106,800 in February and March 1987 and two lodgements of £49,700 and £195,000 on February 24th and 28th respectively.
Of the £50,000 lodgement, Ms Sandra Kells, financial director of Guinness & Mahon bank, said it appeared to have been the proceeds of a cheque drawn on the account of Skellig Investments, a company linked to Mr Byrne.
The largest lodgement was £260,000 drawn on an account at Allied Irish Banks on July 23rd 1987. Every AIB account in the State was examined to see if a matching transaction could be found on that date. Only one such transaction was found, a debit to an account at AIB, Castle Street, Tralee, Co Kerry, in the name of Princes Investments Ltd, a company of which Mr Byrne was a director.
Counsel for the tribunal, Mr Jerry Healy SC, said Mr Byrne had told the tribunal in a statement that he recalled paying a similar sum to Guinness & Mahon in or around July 1987 to repay a loan which Princes Investments had with the bank.
However, documents from Guinness & Mahon showed the loan had been repaid almost two years earlier, on September 4th 1985, with a £186,986.82 transfer from a Cayman Islands Ansbacher account.
Ms Kells noted the bank had been unable to find a copy statement for this transfer despite the fact that one should have been automatically produced on a computerised microfiche system. "The only reason I can give [for not finding a statement]," said Ms Kells, "is that a Guinness & Mahon executive removed the statement from the automated microfiching process."
She added that after the loan had been repaid it appeared statements for a fictitious loan account were generated on the bank's computer system to give the appearance that the loan was still outstanding.
The tribunal heard the original loan was taken out in 1975 for £116,000 with a guarantee signed by Mr Byrne and two other directors of Princes Investments, Mr William Clifford and his brother Mr Thomas Clifford. By May 3rd, 1985, the debt had risen to about £180,000.
A background note stated the guarantors were "well known" to Guinness & Mahon and security was considered "adequate".
Ms Kells confirmed this was a reference used by the bank to indicate the loan was backed by offshore deposits.
In the bank's documentation, the address given for Princes Investments was c/o Business Enterprises Ltd (BEL), 17 Clyde Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4.
Mr Healy noted that Mr Jack Stakelum, who ran BEL, had informed the tribunal he had no knowledge of any dealings his company may have had with the matter in question.
