Lodgments totalling more than £1.5 million to Mr Charles Haughey's personal Guinness & Mahon bank accounts will be investigated by the Moriarty tribunal over the next month. The lodgments were made between 1979 and 1987.
They were mentioned briefly by counsel for the tribunal, Mr John Coughlan SC, in his opening statement yesterday. He said "certain other accounts of Mr Haughey and other sources of funds in his accounts will be examined, including loan accounts of Mr Haughey held both inside and outside the jurisdiction".
He said the evidence heard by the tribunal "would also touch on matters such as the Ansbacher accounts, but only in a peripheral way at this stage".
Lodgments totalling over £180,000 to Mr Michael Lowry's domestic and offshore bank accounts will also be examined by the tribunal. They include a 1991 £100,000 sterling lodgment to Mr Lowry's account in the Channel Islands which was previously examined by the McCracken tribunal.
Mr Coughlan said the tribunal would "also inquire into the circumstances in which an offshore foreign currency account, which would have required the grant of exchange control approval, was opened through AIB O'Connell Street without any apparent application to the Central Bank".
The McCracken tribunal had concluded of that £100,000 sterling lodgment, £34,100 represented the proceeds of a payment of that amount from Dunnes Stores to Streamline Enterprises. Mr Lowry had been asked to comment on and account for the balance of the funds. A sum of £55,000 sterling was deposited in the Channel Islands account on January 17th, 1991.
"Mr Lowry has been unable to identify the source or sources of the monies which funded the draft," Mr Coughlan said, but he had indicated he believed the money may have been the proceeds of a sterling cheque payment by Dunnes to Streamline Enterprises and listed in the McCracken report. Nor could Mr Lowry identify the source or sources of money which funded a further sterling draft for £7,562.72 dated August 30th of that year.
He said that to date the tribunal had not succeeded in obtaining a comprehensive response to its queries to AIB about the potential source of money which funded these two drafts. Witnesses from the bank would be called to give evidence on that question.
The tribunal had also been "endeavouring to establish whether AIB have retained any records concerning these transactions, bearing in mind that they occurred no earlier than 1991", Mr Coughlan said.
It had also emerged since the McCracken tribunal that a sum of £15,000 thought to have originated from an account in AIB Donnybrook now appeared to have involved a bank giro from that branch funded by a debit from the Bank Of Ireland Marino account of Mr Ben Dunne, trading as Dunnes Stores.
Mr Lowry had told the tribunal he was of the view that this was in the nature of a bonus payment by Mr Dunne to him personally. Mr Justice McCracken had been notified of that after he completed his report, and it had been passed on to the present tribunal.
Other matters covered by Mr Coughlan's opening statement included £35,000 in cash given to Mr Lowry by a property developer, Mr Pat Doherty, in exchange for paintings and antiques. The statement also referred to assistance provided by another property developer, Mr Michael Holly, in Mr Lowry's purchase of a house at Carysfort Avenue in Blackrock, Co Dublin.
Payments received by Mr Lowry in respect of his refrigeration business are also to be investigated by the tribunal. One of these comprised a sum of £10,000 paid to Mr Lowry by Whelan Frozen Food Ltd of Inchicore, Dublin, lodged to Mr Lowry's Bank of Ireland, Thurles, account in May 1992.
Another was a cash payment of £25,000 from Mr Bill Maher of Maher Meat Packers credited to Mr Lowry's AIB Dame Street current account in December 1992 for consultancy work Mr Lowry did for the company in the UK.
Mr Coughlan said that in both cases "there was no predetermined rate agreed between the parties for the work nor any rate per hour agreed or any rate agreed by reference to the value of the work being done".
The tribunal would also consider "the fact that the amount was subsequently determined not by negotiation but unilaterally by the person receiving the service".
Mr Coughlan said the tribunal hoped to sit until the end of July "with a number of small adjournments as circumstances may require from time to time". However, "consideration will have to be given to conducting part of these hearings otherwise than in public in view of the fact that information may have to be elicited from bank witnesses who by reasons of their duties of confidentiality have not been able to furnish information to the tribunal to date".
He added that the tribunal was still engaged in investigatory work concerning a number of other matters. He felt it inappropriate to identify the items until they were investigated further.
