In February 1992, three accountants, all of whom had star ted their careers with Haughey Boland, met for lunch and made a new arrangement for handling a bill-paying service for the then Taoiseach, Mr Charles Haughey.
The accountants were Mr Paul Carty, now a senior partner in Deloitte Touche, the late Des Traynor, and Mr Jack Stakelum, who was then running a consultancy service, Business Enterprises Ltd.
Haughey Boland was about to merge with Deloitte Touche and Mr Traynor had concerns about confidentiality if Mr Haughey's affairs were to be handled by a multinational accountancy firm.
Mr Stakelum agreed to take on the task. No fee was involved. He set up a new bank account. The bank arranged cheques with an identifying microdot instead of the name of the account.
As Mr Stakelum explained yesterday, this was done so a butcher who sold meat to the Haughey household, for example, wouldn't be able to reveal that Mr Haughey's bills were being paid by Business Enterprises Ltd.
Every month 20 to 30 invoices arrived at Mr Stakelum's Clyde Road offices. His office arranged payment with the microdot cheques. The account was also used to send approximately £450 a week to Mr Haughey's home in Kinsealy for sundry household expenses.
The money was collected from Mr Stakelum's offices by Mr Haughey's driver.
When the account required funding, it was supplied by Mr Traynor. Mr Padraig Collery took over this task after Mr Traynor's death in May 1994. The money came from the Ansbacher deposits.
Mr Collery began supplying Mr Stakelum with quarterly memorandums outlining the balances on Mr Haughey's accounts so Mr Stakelum could inform Mr Haughey, which Mr Traynor would have done previously.
The amounts being spent were significant. In 1992 (February to December) £340,000 was lodged to the account. Over the following years the figures were: £305,000 (1993); £320,000 (1994); £434,000 (1995); £266,630 (1996).
The only lodgements to Mr Haughey's Ansbacher accounts from early 1997 were a donation of £100,000 sterling from Mr Dermot Desmond and the proceeds an NCB investment account cashed in 1995. There were also earnings from interest.
Mr Haughey had four Ansbacher accounts. The memo dated July 1994 showed one sterling account with a balance of £4,667; a second sterling account of £101,184; a US dollar account of $78,148; and a Deutschmark account of DM 2.2 million (the then equivalent of approximately £1 million).
The memo dated October 1996 showed balances in the same four accounts of: £81,000 sterling; £101,000 sterling; $88,000; and DM971,000.
In October 1994 there was a lodgement of £99,980 sterling from Mr Desmond (£100,000 minus bank charges). The NCB investment account yielded £168,036 sterling in 1995.
In November 1996, £24,630 - the equivalent of £25,000 sterling - was lodged directly into the account operated by Mr Stakelum. Again the money came from Mr Desmond.
Mr Stakelum stopped operating the bill-paying service for Mr Haughey around the time of the 1997 McCracken tribunal. When the existence of the Ansbacher deposits was made public, the accounts were frozen; some of the deposits had already been moved, but Mr Stakelum said Mr Haughey's account was frozen.
It is understood the account is still frozen, pending a Revenue assessment as to whether DIRT is due. The matter is unlikely to be resolved prior to the completion of the Moriarty tribunal.
In his evidence, Mr Desmond said in 1988 Mr Traynor approached him and said he wanted to open a number of private investment accounts with NCB. The accounts were opened in the name Overseas Nominees. He thought the accounts may have been moved from Guinness & Mahon bank.
There were three lodgements in 1988, totalling £338,437. Mr Desmond said he did not know the source of the money, other than it came from Mr Traynor.
One possibility raised during his evidence was that the money may have come from the Ansbacher deposits, though there was no evidence of this. He did not know one of the accounts was for Mr Haughey's benefit.
Mr Desmond had just begun to give evidence concerning his donation of £100,000 sterling to Mr Haughey when the hearing ended. The donation came after Mr Haughey had mentioned to him "that he was thinking of taking up a non-executive directorship of a German bank", Mr Desmond said.
He will continue giving evidence today.