Two former long-term colleagues and friends of the late Mr Des Traynor laid the blame at his door yesterday for activities uncovered by the tribunal.
At the centre of yesterday's evidence is Princes Investments Ltd, a company partly owned by property developer Mr John Byrne which is involved in the management of the Mount Brandon Hotel in Tralee, Co Kerry. In 1975 it took out a loan from Guinness & Mahon bank for £116,000.
Internal bank documentation shows the loan was backed by money in the Ansbacher deposits. In September 1985 the loan, plus interest, was paid off with money from the deposits. However, a month later a bogus bank statement was produced purporting to show the loan was still in existence.
Mr Padraig Collery, a computer expert who worked for Guinness & Mahon in the 1980s and helped Mr Traynor run the Ansbacher deposits, signed two bank certificates stating that the loan was still in existence after it had been paid off. He admitted yesterday that when signing the certificates he probably knew the bank statements relating to the loan were fictitious.
He said he "probably" created the false statements "before or around the time" of requests for the certificates from Mr Paul Carty of Haughey Boland, auditors to Princes Investments. He was working to the instructions of Mr Traynor, he said.
Counsel for the tribunal, Mr John Coughlan SC and Mr Jerry Healy SC, have suggested that the reason the false statements were produced was that the people operating the Ansbacher deposits wanted to cover the money trail after the loan was paid off with Ansbacher funds.
Mr Byrne gave evidence yesterday that when Princes Investments was paying £260,000 to Guinness & Mahon, supposedly to settle its 1975 loan, he was unaware that the loan had been paid off two years earlier with money from the Ansbacher deposits.
He also said he had not been aware that the Princes Investments loan was backed by money lodged in the deposits. He agreed with Mr Healy that loans worth millions of pounds which his companies had taken out over the years from Guinness & Mahon and Irish Intercontinental Bank were backed in such a way, and that the loan was taken out with Guinness & Mahon because of his connection with Mr Traynor.
In the 1980s Mr Traynor was a director of Guinness & Mahon and chairman of its Cayman Islands subsidiary. That subsidiary ran the trust which owns Mr Byrne's highly-successful property company, Carlisle Trust. Mr Traynor was a director of Carlisle, a trustee of the Cayman trust, and personal adviser to Mr Bryne.
Mr Byrne agreed that Mr Traynor probably knew the Princes Investments loan had been paid off in 1985, and that it was probably Mr Traynor who asked for the £260,000 two years later. Mr Traynor was the only one who could have paid off the loan without Mr Byrne knowing, Mr Byrne said.
Mr Healy put it to Mr Byrne that it was "inconceivable" that Mr Traynor had not told him what was happening with his money, but Mr Byrne insisted this was the case.
He said the whole bizarre scenario which had been discovered by the tribunal was not the sort of behaviour he would have expected from Mr Traynor. At the time he had "absolute confidence" in Mr Traynor who, he said, was "basically a straight fellow".
Asked by Mr Healy if he was a friend of Mr Haughey's, Mr Byrne said "Very much so", and that they had known each other for 40 years. Yet, he said, he would not give money to Mr Haughey even if asked to by Mr Traynor. He was "very firm" on the issue of giving to parties rather than individuals. "I confine my contributions to the party and let him, or whoever it is, distribute it."
The tribunal has heard that a cheque for £50,000 written by Mr Byrne in February 1987, the month Mr Haughey was returned to power, was lodged to the Amiens account in Guinness & Mahon. Mr Byrne said he must have written it after it was requested by Mr Traynor, but could not remember what the money was needed for. He had never heard of Amiens until told of it by the tribunal, he said.
The tribunal has also heard that of the £260,000 lodged to the Amiens account in July 1987, £40,000 was subsequently transferred to Haughey Boland to pay for living expenses incurred by Mr Haughey.
Mr Justice Moriarty asked Mr Byrne whether it would be fair to say his evidence was marked by inability to remember events, and surprise at what was being revealed to him by the tribunal.
Mr Byrne, who is 80, said: "We all get on."