Identity of who controls Cayman deposits unknown

After Ansbacher Cayman transferred its Irish customers' funds from Dublin to the Cayman Islands it kept Padraig Collery as its agent here to look after the affairs of its most significant client.

In return for this, Collery was paid £1,000 sterling per month by the client, although, as he said himself, very little work was required. The customer concerned was "the most significant client that Ansbacher had funds in respect of", Collery told the tribunal this week. However, the identity of this particular client was not revealed.

Collery was paid £1,000 every month up to March 1997, when the McCracken tribunal began its work, even though the client's funds were not here since 1995 or 1996. Asked why he was being paid, he said: "I was lending my knowledge of how the whole thing was set up here and the transfer back to Cayman of those funds."

It was put to Collery that the funds went to the Cayman Islands in 1995. "No, I think there were, you know in relation to this particular client, there were all the general funds in 1995 went back to back situations. I think there were some funds left to 1996 and they went back - again we would have to check the records."

While it is not clear what he meant by this, it seems Collery was saying the fact that some deposits were secretly being used as backing for loans offered by the Dublin bank, may have delayed their transfer to the Cayman Islands.

A second mystery figure emerged this week. During Collery's 1998 trip to the Cayman Islands money was taken from a number of depositors' accounts without their knowledge to pay £57,000 in legal costs incurred by the late John Furze in a successful action he took against the McCracken tribunal in the Caymans. TD Denis Foley had £5,000 taken from his account.

Collery said he did this on the instructions of Barry Benjamin, executor to the estate of Furze and controller of Hamilton Ross Co Ltd. Benjamin told The Irish Times last week that he did it and apologised for doing so, but did so on instruction from another party, someone whose name will "never come out".

He said that when Furze was going in for a heart operation in July 1997, from which he never recovered, he told Benjamin to take instructions from this person in the event of his death. Collery told the tribunal during the week that he knew of no other party from whom Benjamin might be taking instructions.