Next week the Moriarty tribunal inquiring into the finances of Mr Charles Haughey and Mr Michael Lowry will examine a question posed by its counsel, Mr John Coughlan SC, on Thursday.
How did a cheque for £282,500 sterling, made out in May 1987 for a company called Tripleplan, make its way into an account of Mr Haughey in Guinness & Mahon bank, when "on the basis of the evidence available to the tribunal, there was no intention on the part of Dunnes Stores or Mr Bernard Dunne" that the cheque go to Mr Haughey?
On Thursday the man who wrote the cheque, Mr Matthew Price, a former director with Dunnes Stores (Bangor), said he sent it to Dublin to Mr Noel Fox. Mr Fox is a close personal friend of Mr Dunne, a trustee of the Dunnes Settlement Trust, and a senior partner with Oliver Freaney and Co, auditors to some of the Dunnes Stores companies. Mr Price said he would not have issued the cheque without getting express instructions to do so from Mr Dunne.
Yesterday the tribunal heard evidence from two auditors who work with Oliver Freaney and who dealt with the Dunnes accounts. Mr Kevin Drumgoole told how the accounts for Dunnes Stores Ireland Company for 1987 could not be signed off because they could not get information on the Tripleplan payment. The item was put into a "suspense account".
Mr Drumgoole looked for information from Mr Price, Mr Michael Irwin, the then chief accountant to the Dunnes group, from Mr Fox, and "maybe from Mr Dunne". Mr Fox had said he would get information from Mr Dunne but the matter was never cleared up, Mr Drumgoole said.
The payment remained in a suspense account and was one of a number of matters preventing the signing off of the 1987 accounts. The item was on the agenda for a meeting held in September 1989 to review the situation. So was another cheque, the motivation for which was also a mystery to Mr Drumgoole. That cheque was to a Mr John Furze.
The John Furze cheque mentioned in the memo came up during the McCracken tribunal in 1997, which investigated payments from Dunnes to Mr Haughey.
In his report Mr Justice McCracken wrote: "A short time later [in late 1987] Mr Noel Fox was again contacted by Mr Desmond Traynor, who said that Mr Charles Haughey urgently required the sterling equivalent of £205,000 and asked that it be provided by way of a cheque made out to Mr John Furze, who said he was the banker looking after the transaction. Mr Noel Fox had never heard of Mr John Furze, nor did he know what bank he was connected with."
That cheque was also written by Mr Price, the former director with Dunnes Stores (Bangor).
On Thursday Mr Price said that on December 13th, 1996, he was asked by Dunnes for a list of "not normal" payments made by him. He sent the list to Dunnes Stores and in particular to Mr Pat O'Donoghue, then a senior accountant with Dunnes. He heard nothing more about these "not normal payments".
The request for the list came as the company was preparing for the Buchanan inquiry, which investigated the Price Waterhouse report. The report was commissioned by Dunnes Stores following the departure of Mr Dunne and was concerned with payments made by Mr Dunne during his time at the helm of the group.
Mr Justice Buchanan was asked by the Government to inspect the report following the revelation that Mr Michael Lowry had received payments from Mr Dunne.
The McCracken tribunal was subsequently established to investigate payments from Dunnes to politicians, but the Tripleplan payment was not brought to the notice of that tribunal.
The payment was brought to the notice of the Moriarty tribunal early last year by Dunnes and Mr Fox. Evidence was heard yesterday from Mr Paul Wyse, an accountant with Oliver Freaney, who told of asking for company searches for Tripleplan in a number of jurisdictions.
The first was carried out in 1994, a year after Mr Ben Dunne had been removed from his executive positions in the Dunnes group. Further searches were carried out in 1997. Still nothing was found. In November 1998, during a discussion in the Oliver Freaney offices, it was mentioned that some company searches did not involve searching for dissolved companies. "I immediately asked if that was true in the Tripleplan search," Mr Wyse said.
A new search was carried out, and it was discovered that Tripleplan was a British company and had been dissolved in July 1988. The directors were the late Mr Furze and another Cayman banker, Mr John Collins. Company secretarial services were carried out by Management Investment Services, a Dublin company often used by the late Mr Traynor.
It was following this discovery that the matter was brought to the tribunal's attention, Mr Wyse said. He also said the Tripleplan cheque was not the only issue holding up the signing off of the Dunnes Stores Ireland Company accounts.
It is likely evidence on the Tripleplan payment will be heard next week from Mr Fox and Mr Dunne. Mr Dunne is expected to say he has no recollection of making any instructions in relation to Tripleplan, and did not intend any such payment to go to Mr Haughey.
There has been no indication to date as to what the position of Mr Fox will be. The tribunal resumes hearing evidence on Tuesday.