Coveney says late father was not depositor at Ansbacher

Mr Simon Coveney, Fine Gael TD for Cork South-Central, has said his late father, Mr Hugh Coveney TD, was the beneficiary of loans granted by Guinness & Mahon bank in the early 1980s.

He said he believed the loans - denominated in US dollars - were sourced at Guinness & Mahon's Cayman Islands subsidiary, Ansbacher (Cayman), the company alleged to have operated as an unlicensed bank designed to defraud the Revenue Commissioners since the 1970s.

Repeating his denial that his father was ever an Ansbacher depositor, Mr Coveney said the legitimate loans were used to fund a US investment.

"The only dealings that he [Mr Hugh Coveney] ever had with Ansbacher (Cayman) was the fact that he was involved in that foreign investment because Guinness & Mahon would presumably have sourced the dollars from Guinness & Mahon Cayman (now Ansbacher)," said Mr Coveney. "There's no question of any deposits or other money held with Ansbacher."

Mr Coveney said he was satisfied that this was the only reason his father's name had apparently been included on the list of 120 senior figures associated with Ansbacher which appeared in the report of a State-appointed authorised officer who investigated the company.

The investment had not been successful and all the money had been repaid in full to Guinness & Mahon, he said.

He said his father had been linked with the late Mr Des Traynor due to dealings he had with Guinness & Mahon in a professional capacity as a quantity surveyor before he entered politics.

The money borrowed from Guinness & Mahon was used to finance several building projects, Mr Coveney said. All relevant information on these transactions had been provided to the Moriarty tribunal before his father's death, to the satisfaction of the tribunal. His legal advisers had told him to make no further comment on these transactions, he said.

"We went through a fairly lengthy probate process after Dad's death and made it our business to find out every detail about his financial affairs," he said.

No information had emerged to suggest that his father was an Ansbacher depositor, he said. If his father had been involved, Mr Coveney said he presumed that the funds would have passed to his mother - as the main beneficiary of Mr Hugh Coveney's will - after his death. This had not happened.