Money handover:Manchester businessman Michael Wall left almost £30,000 sterling (€44,000) in a suitcase in the wardrobe of his room in the Ashling Hotel in Dublin while he went to a Fianna Fáil dinner, he told the Mahon tribunal yesterday.
The tribunal heard that Mr Wall brought the cash over to Dublin in a briefcase to make it available to Mr Ahern so that he could pay for work related to a house in Drumcondra the Taoiseach was to live in.
Mr Wall moved to Manchester in 1959 and ran his own coach business there with more than 50 employees until 1997.
During the course of his business he became involved with promoting Irish tourism and began to meet various government ministers.
It was in this context that he first met Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, when he was minister for labour and then minister for finance in the late 1980s, the tribunal was told.
He said that he met Mr Ahern's former partner, Celia Ahern, in the 1990s and also became her friend.
The three became "close friends" and Mr Wall would see Mr Ahern when he travelled to Dublin, where he was considering establishing a business.
He stayed in hotels when he visited Dublin, the tribunal was told, but realised that he would need more permanent accommodation to run his business.
He discussed the matter with Mr Ahern and discovered that he was in need of accommodation too. An arrangement was made whereby Mr Wall would purchase a house and could use it when in Dublin, but Mr Ahern would live in it, renting it from him, with an option to buy.
Mr Ahern and Ms Larkin sourced 44 Beresford, off Griffith Avenue, in Drumcondra, for £138,000 and Mr Wall put a £3,000 booking deposit on it on December 1st, 1994.
On the following day, Mr Wall travelled with his wife and some invited guests to Dublin to attend the annual O'Donovan Rossa dinner, a constituency fund-raiser, which he described as his "Christmas treat".
He brought with him a black suitcase containing almost £30,000 sterling with some Irish punts.
He told the tribunal that Mr Ahern had mentioned the house would need a conservatory and alterations, such as "a man in his position would want". He expected the sale to go through in 28 days, he said, and so he brought cash in a suitcase because he knew it would be needed.
"I had the money in my safe," Mr Wall said.
"It was no load to carry . . . If he [ Mr Ahern] says no, no, I don't want anything to do with it, I'd have brought it back again."
He said that his wife knew nothing about the money. When he was leaving for the dinner, he "probably shoved about two grand" in his pocket, the tribunal heard, and then put the briefcase inside the wardrobe of the hotel room in which he was staying.
Asked by counsel for the tribunal, Henry Murphy SC, how many times he had done that in his lifetime, he replied that he'd done it several times.
Mr Murphy pointed out that much of the money was in fact used to pay stamp duty on the house and asked Mr Wall why he did not send a cheque to his solicitor to pay for that.
"I dealt a lot in cash, it's just as easy for me to bring cash as a cheque," he said. "And I always have a back-up in the safe, of £30,000 to £40,000, and it's just as easy to bring that as to go to the bank."
Quizzed in relation to whether he had paid tax on the cash in his safe, Mr Wall said that all the money taken on his buses was accounted for and that his accountant would have worked off his returns on the clipping machines in the coaches when paying his tax bill.
"Whether the cash was put into the bank or I put it in my pocket, it is still accounted for," he said.
Questioned on his practices by his own counsel, James Connolly SC, Mr Wall explained that he had an interest in horses and might bring £5,000 or £10,000 in cash to Ireland on his visits.
