The former Taoiseach, Mr Charles Haughey, has refused to give a waiver granting the Moriarty tribunal access to records of his dealings with Ansbacher Bank on the Cayman Islands.
Mr Haughey has given the tribunal access to his Irish bank accounts - although the tribunal would have been able to gain access anyway. The same is not true for the secretive Cayman Islands.
Yesterday it was disclosed that in 1983 Mr Haughey got a £400,000 loan from Ansbacher (Cayman) Ltd, then called Guinness Mahon Cayman Trust and a subsidiary of Guinness & Mahon Bank (G&M), Dublin. At the time, Mr Haughey had a number of accounts in his name with the Dublin bank but the £400,000 wasn't lodged to any of them. The tribunal has not yet been able to identify where it went.
Under 1980s exchange control regulations, Mr Haughey had to apply to the Central Bank for permission to take out his Cayman loan. The application was made by Mr Haughey's adviser, the late Mr Des Traynor, on December 8th, 1982. Mr Traynor, as de facto chief executive of G&M, told the Central Bank Mr Haughey wanted the funds to develop his Kinsealy stud farm. The application was approved.
The Central Bank told Mr Traynor that contact on the matter should be made only to named individuals. It kept Mr Haughey's file separately from all others.
Six days after the loan application was made, Mr Haughey was replaced as Taoiseach by Dr Garret FitzGerald. At the time a Taoiseach's salary was about £17,000 and a TD's salary was about £10,000. It seems the loan was repaid around 1987, when Mr Haughey was returning or had returned to power.
However, Mr Haughey's income in the 1980s was far in excess of that of an average TD. The tribunal is examining four accounts in G&M, three of which were in Mr Haughey's name and one of which was held jointly by him and the late Mr Harry Boland. During the period February 1979 to May 1987, lodgements of somewhere between £1.5 million and £1.8 million were made to these accounts.
The lack of precision is due to the fact that funds were transferred between the accounts and not all of the records necessary to follow the transfers are still in existence. Also, Mr Haughey has to date refused to be of any assistance to the tribunal in relation to the lodgements.
The amounts lodged to Mr Haughey's accounts do not include his salary cheques, which it seems Mr Haughey lodged or cashed elsewhere. Including the Cayman Islands loan, Mr Haughey managed to spend approximately £2 million during the period 1979 to 1987. However it is possible that the £400,000 was transferred into Mr Haughey's account within the secretive Ansbacher deposits and from there to his named accounts. Evidence yesterday indicated one such transfer, of £200,000, from an "S" account in the Ansbacher deposits to one of his named accounts, occurred in January 1983.
Not only did he spend up to £2 million in eight years but, it was disclosed yesterday, his accounts were generally "badly" overdrawn. G&M granted him a £200,000 overdraft facility for "cash flow" reasons and without security in April 1985.
The late Mr P.V. Doyle, founder of the Doyle Hotels group, had accounts with G&M and allowed transfers be made from these accounts to those of Mr Haughey. An executive with the group, Mr George Carville, has told the tribunal he recalls being told by Mr Doyle that he, Mr Doyle, had guaranteed a loan to Mr Haughey through G&M and that Mr Haughey had agreed to repay the loan and pay the interest.
In the event, this never happened. When Mr Doyle died Mr Traynor sought payment from the Doyle family of £120,000 plus interest. The loan was settled with a cheque from P.V. Doyle Holdings Ltd. Other payments over the years from Mr Doyle to Mr Haughey may have brought the total benefit to the former Taoiseach to £300,000.
The finance director with G&M, Ms Sandra Kells, gave evidence in relation to the lodgements to Mr Haughey's accounts over the years and the extent to which documentary evidence still exists. Apart from the payments by Mr Doyle, loans from other financial institutions, payments from Mr Ben Dunne, and £50,000 from a Saudi Arabian diplomat, a Mr Fustok, no source was identified other than accounts belonging to or under the control of the late Mr Traynor.
Some of the funds came from accounts in the name of Amiens Securities, a company controlled by Mr Traynor. Some of the records relating to this company are missing from the G&M archives.
Mr Haughey's counsel, Mr Eoin McGonigal SC, was not at yesterday's sitting and has not attended a sitting for some months now. Nor have any of Mr Haughey's other legal representatives. No reason for this has been disclosed. Mr McGonigal is still representing Mr Haughey.