By his own admission, Mr James Gogarty participated in an alleged attempt to bribe a Minister. He hid money from the Revenue for a time and was, by all accounts, a hard man to deal with. Yet the Flood tribunal was established largely to investigate his allegations.
But what are we to make of the latest claims by Mr Denis O'Brien, of Ballyharoon House, Glanmire, Cork, that he passed on massive amounts of money to two Government ministers in 1989?
Mr O'Brien identified himself at the weekend and has promised to produce backing documents to the Flood tribunal.
Now in his late 50s or early 60s, Mr O'Brien has been embroiled for decades in litigation with the banks over his house and business interests. In 1989, a High Court judge accused him of forging a letter and said he would have considered having Mr O'Brien charged with perjury, but for the absence of a written transcript in the case.
Hurling and Cork connect Mr O'Brien to the property developer Mr Owen O'Callaghan, on whose behalf Mr O'Brien claims he paid £100,000 to two Fianna Fail politicians. Mr O'Brien was a long-time chairman of Glen Rovers, the Cork hurling club of Jack Lynch and Christy Ring. Mr O'Callaghan was involved in fund-raising drives for the club.
But do the connections run any deeper than that? It seems Mr O'Brien tried to get Mr O'Callaghan involved in buying lands for development at Carrigaline, but Mr O'Callaghan says he declined to participate. But this is all we know, with Mr O'Brien declining to comment further.
Whereas Mr O'Callaghan has developed large numbers of houses and some of the State's biggest shopping centres, Mr O'Brien's property dealings are comparatively small. Mr O'Brien's identity was Ireland's worst-kept secret last week, but daily newspapers held back from identifying him as he refused to confirm he was the person making the allegations. Contacted by The Irish Times, he said: "I think you're probably a nice man. I think I'm a fairly decent man. Have a nice day."
Later in the week, he told this reporter: "You're on to the wrong house, talking to the wrong man. I'm only an ordinary guy." He refused to confirm or deny he was the person making the allegations.
In 1995, the High Court ordered the winding-up of a Cork property company, Edenfell Holdings Ltd, with which Mr O'Brien was linked. The company, which owned over 40 acres of building land at Carrigaline, owed over £500,000 to Anglo-Irish Bank Corporation. Although Mr O'Brien was referred to as a director of Edenfell in court, documents lodged with the Companies Registration Office appear to show he resigned as a director in September 1992.
Mr O'Brien told the Sunday Business Post this weekend the reason he revealed the alleged payments was to allow the tribunal to investigate the circumstances in which he lost control of this property. In February 1999, one month before he contacted the paper, Anglo-Irish Bank Corporation took High Court proceedings against Mr O'Brien and his wife Maeve, claiming they owed it £145,000 with interest.
The couple claimed the bank had incorrectly calculated the interest.
His dispute with the bank is ongoing and Anglo-Irish has possession of the deeds of his family home.
In the 1989 case, heard a month after Mr O'Brien says he paid the money to the politicians, Mr Justice Barr of the High Court ruled that the Ulster Bank was entitled to almost £85,000, and interest, on foot of loans. Mr O'Brien, who was then chairman of Glen Rovers, was involved in the transfer of the club's accounts from AIB to Ulster Bank.
He claimed that because of his role in the transfer he was given verbal undertakings by bank personnel that his personal accounts would have a "clean sheet". The undertaking was said to have been given in the toilet at Glen Rovers during a function.
In his reserved judgment, Mr Justice Barr said he was satisfied that a purported letter, dating from 1979, from Mr Rowan Hamilton, then chief executive of Ulster Bank, to Mr O'Brien was a forgery perpetrated by, or at the behest of, Mr O'Brien.
The judge said he had considered sending the papers concerning the trial to the DPP to consider charging Mr O'Brien with perjury and forgery, but in the absence of an official stenographer's note of the evidence, he had decided not to. In 1990, Mr O'Brien's appeal to the Supreme Court was dismissed, with costs, for want of prosecution.
As for the £100,000 allegedly paid to the politicians, Mr O'Brien says he has documentary proof to show this was withdrawn from an account in the Patrick Street branch of the Irish Nationwide Building Society in Cork. However, he has yet to produce this evidence.
The tribunal is trying to get to the bottom of this mystery by seeking financial documentation from the building society for the relevant period.