One of the ironies of the tribunals and other investigations into corruption in recent years is that the best-known culprits are also the main "fall-guys".
While middle-men such as George Redmond and Frank Dunlop take the rap for their involvement in bribery and graft, the wealthy landowners and business interests on whose behalf they worked have remained largely untouched up to now.
This was illustrated this week in the contrasting fortunes of Redmond and his erstwhile benefactor, businessman and land speculator Jim Kennedy.
Two days before the 79-year-old former official was found guilty of corruption charges in the Circuit Criminal Court, an arbitrator awarded Kennedy's company, Jackson Way, €13 million for land compulsorily acquired for the south-eastern motorway at Carrickmines.
Kennedy, who lives in opulent splendour in the Isle of Man and Gibraltar, may never get his hands on this money - and certainly not if Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown County Council or the Criminal Assets Bureau get their way - but he won't be going hungry for the want of it. Refusing to co-operate with the Mahon tribunal hasn't cost Kennedy his freedom or a penny of his wealth so far, and there is little indication that the lawyers will be able to strike at him in his offshore haunts.
Aside from the Jackson Way lands, his holdings in Ireland have been liquidated or moved to the ownership of family members. The biggest inconvenience has been the occasional unwanted visit by a television camera crew.
Meanwhile, back in Dublin, even before Wednesday's judgment, Redmond had already sold the family home in order to meet a £782,000 settlement with the Revenue Commissioners. Now he faces mounting legal bills, the possibility of up to seven years in jail and a fine, plus further charges.
For his part, Dunlop has seen his business collapse and his friends melt away, and he faces years of giving evidence to the tribunal, probable investigation by the CAB and a criminal prosecution.
Links between Redmond and Kennedy go back to the early 1980s, when Kennedy was active in housebuilding in west Dublin. Kennedy bought an amusement arcade in Westmoreland Street and used it as his business base. Redmond, who used to purchase his weekly shopping in a cash-and-carry on Kennedy's account, claims he loaned the businessman £110,000 in 1980 to invest in another arcade in Clondalkin.
But the tribunal heard a claim, which Redmond denied, that this money was used in a business venture with Kennedy at Ballyowen Stud, near Lucan. This land was bought for £1.3 million in 1980, rezoned with the help of a friendly Fianna Fáil councillor, and sold later for £3.5 million. For years after this, Redmond would call in to the Westmoreland Street arcade to collect bundles of cash. These represented the interest payments on his loan, he later explained.
Meanwhile, Kennedy bought the 100 acres of land at Carrickmines in the late 1980s for €840,000; it is just 20 acres of this that has now been valued at €13 million. After a string of controversies, business collapses and a central place in the Garda investigations of 1989, Kennedy was anxious to disguise his involvement in the land.
Together with solicitor John Caldwell, he created an elaborate ownership structure through an offshore company, Paisley Park Investments. He brought in Frank Dunlop to lobby councillors for rezoning, but that attempt failed in 1993.
Kennedy then liquidated Paisley Park and transferred ownership to another company, Jackson Way. On the face of it, Jackson Way was no shelf company but a respectable entity registered in Birmingham, whose sole director was a leading estate agent in that city. However, real ownership of the company, as constructed by Caldwell, remained offshore. Indeed, the tribunal has traced Kennedy's share of Jackson Way to a company based in war-torn Liberia in west Africa where, not surprisingly, the trail runs dry.