A Cavan farmer and businessman told the High Court yesterday he invested £168,000 from his bogus non-resident account in a CMI personal portfolio product in August 1996 after several meetings with Ms Beverley Cooper-Flynn.
Mr Patrick Duff said he made the investment after being advised by her that his money would go to a numbered account and his name would not appear on a document.
He said Ms Cooper-Flynn, a former investment adviser with National Irish Bank, was at NIB's Bailieboro branch in 1996 when a print-out of details of a bogus non-resident bank account held by him was produced.
Mr Duff (50), an NIB customer who owned a licensed premises, newsagency and hardware store at Main Street, Bailieboro, said he had invested £308,000 in CMI policies. Following a voluntary disclosure to the Revenue Commissioners in 1998, he paid £338,000 to the Revenue and £16,000 in capital gains tax. He had money which was undeclared from buying and selling cattle and horses.
Mr Duff was the first defence witness on the 11th day of Ms Cooper-Flynn's libel action against RTE; journalist Mr Charlie Bird; and a retired farmer, Mr James Howard, Wheaton Hall, Drogheda, Co Louth.
Mr Duff said he had been thinking of availing of the tax amnesty in 1993 but Ms Cooper-Flynn had asked him why he should give 15 per cent of his money away when she could put the money to work for him.
He had about 10 meetings with her between 1991 and 1996. He invested his money with NIB in a bogus non-resident account in the name John Duff, with an address at 25 Finsbury Park, London.
He met Ms Cooper-Flynn in the Bailieboro branch of NIB in late 1991 or early 1992. They discussed his investing in CMI.
In June 1992, he said, she wrote him a letter and report and called to his premises. At the time he had a bogus non-resident account earning 18 per cent, with monthly interest, in the name of John Duff of Finsbury Park. By the mid-1990s there was about £173,000 in it.
In 1993 he had a couple of meetings with Ms Cooper-Flynn during which they talked about the tax amnesty. She said he should not give away 15 per cent of his funds when she could invest the money for him. She told him if the money was brought to the Isle of Man it would never be found, he said. Ms Cooper-Flynn was endeavouring to get him to put his money into a CMI portfolio.
After a meeting with her in August 1996 in the bank, at which a print-out of his non-resident account was produced, he withdrew £168,000 from the John Duff account and invested it in a CMI personal portfolio. In December 1996, when an Ark Life policy matured, he invested a further £140,000 from the proceeds in CMI.
He was convinced by Ms Cooper-Flynn's assurances that the investment would be confidential, that it would go into a numbered account and that NIB was giving him a free "top up" of £2,600 to add to his investment, Mr Duff told Mr Kevin Feeney SC, for RTE.
When the CMI scheme came into the public arena in 1998, he heard that its personal portfolio was illegal. He cashed some of the policy and made a voluntary disclosure to the Revenue in 1999, after which he paid just over £350,000.
Cross-examined by Mr Garrett Cooney SC, for Ms Cooper-Flynn, Mr Duff said he bought 30 acres in 1980 for £21,000. He acquired another 30 acres after about 10 years. When he owned 60 acres, he bought the pub. He divided the site and built a house in the early 1980s. In the late 1980s he was a building contractor. That company was in existence from 1986 to 1991 or 1992.
He employed one accountant for the farm and another for the business. Asked if he had filed appropriate business returns to the Revenue, he said he had not. He had made tax returns. His accountant did not know he was dealing in cattle and horses. He denied he lied to the accountant - he had never told him about it.
The hearing before Mr Justice Morris and a jury continues.