Mr Charles Haughey's main benefactor, Mr Ben Dunne, insisted yesterday that his 1987 offer to relieve the former Taoiseach's financial embarrassment was not open-ended.
When approached by Mr Noel Fox, the Dunnes Stores financial adviser, about a request on Mr Haughey's behalf from Mr Des Traynor, he had agreed to take the burden on himself, he confirmed. The sum involved, as he understood it, was somewhere between £700,000 and £900,000, he told Mr John Coughlan SC, for the tribunal.
"Is it your belief that there was an understanding between you and Mr Fox on a figure of between £700,000 and £900,000, maybe a million?"
"That was my understanding, yes."
Was it not unusual, Mr Coughlan asked, that Mr Dunne, an experienced businessman, and Mr Fox, an accountant, had not noticed that the payments were climbing towards the £2 million mark? Could it be that the "understanding" was for £2 million, "or any sum of money that was necessary" to relieve Mr Haughey's indebtedness?
"If it was, I believe I would remember it", Mr Dunne replied. "The answer is no."
Earlier, when questioned about the payment of £200,000 to Mr Traynor from Wytrex, a Far Eastern company, whose beneficial owner was Mr Laurence Tse, a Hong Kong businessman, Mr Dunne had conceded that he sometimes was wrong in his recollections.
"You're satisfied - or are you - that there was no other instruction to pay money to Mr Traynor, or someone like Mr Traynor?"
He was satisfied, Mr Dunne said.
Mr Coughlan asked Mr Dunne about Equifex Trust Corporation AG - Tse Kam Ming - a trust fund. This was used to "hold funds" he would have generated in the Far East, Mr Dunne said. It was managed by the Isle of Man-based Mr Julian Harper.
The trust fund had been set up about six months before the approach from Mr Traynor, Mr Dunne said, and not for the purpose of dispensing funds to Mr Haughey. Mr Dunne was the sole beneficiary of the trust.
Mr Coughlan then asked about the "mechanics" of a £471,000 sterling payment - "equivalent to half a million pounds Irish" - from the Swiss-based Equifex. Mr Dunne confirmed that he had telephoned Mr Harper and "given him a bank account to transfer funds to".
In this case, the £471,000 had been transferred to a client account, Froriep Renggli & Partners, and from there to Barclays Bank in Knightsbridge, London, for credit to an account in the name of Mr John Furze, the Cayman Island banker. It thus found its way, via Henry Ansbacher, London, to Mr Traynor for the benefit of Mr Haughey.
Counsel for the tribunal returned again and again to the Wytrex payment. He wanted to be clear, he said, that no other payments had been made through that account for the benefit of Mr Haughey. He asked: "Did you ever issue an instruction to transfer £200,000 to anybody from Wytrex other than the funds going through Equifex?"
He did not, Mr Dunne said.
Mr Dunne could still not recollect initiating the £200,000 payment through Wytrex for the benefit of Mr Haughey. He told the tribunal: "I'm sure I did, if I gave the instruction."
"And is the reason why you don't now recollect it - or think it significant - that it was always your intention to pay what was necessary [as regards Mr Haughey]?"
"I just honestly don't remember it", he said.
He would have noticed "a million pounds in one go a lot more quickly than - excuse the expression - on the drip", he surmised.