Developer 'astonished' by Dunlop

A property developer behind the Citywest business park has said he was "astonished" that a company, owned by lobbyist Frank Dunlop, to which he paid cheques had no bank account and was not registered for VAT.

Brendan Hickey, managing director of Davy Hickey Properties Ltd, gave Mr Dunlop £20,000 (€25,300) in June 1991 and £10,000 in January 1992 to make political donations in respect of the local and general elections in those years.

He made a further payment of £10,000 in November 1992 in respect of Mr Dunlop's fees, however Mr Dunlop has told the tribunal that this was used to pay politicians.

The payments were made to Shefran Ltd, a company owned by Mr Dunlop that had a shareholding in the Citywest development and is described on its headed notepaper as a PR consultancy. However, the company never traded and had no bank account. Mr Hickey said he only became aware of these facts through the tribunal and they came as a "great surprise" to him. "Considering Shefran was the name of the company that had the partnership share in Citywest, I'm astonished when you say those things."

Mr Hickey said he trusted Mr Dunlop "entirely" and never had any reason to believe that he was involved in anything unethical or wrong. "I would not have been dealing with a company, a person, who was carrying on his affairs like that if I had known that was the case. But I had absolutely no reason to believe that he was carrying on his affairs like that."

Mr Dunlop has told the tribunal that he generated bogus invoices on Shefran headed paper with a description of services that had never been carried out, and used the money as part of his "stash of cash" to pay politicians.

Mr Hickey said he had not examined the invoices to check that he understood what they related to, however he said he had believed at the time that they were legitimate. "If I thought we were engaging with somebody who was doing something untoward, unethical or illegal, we would have nothing further to do with him."

Counsel for the tribunal Desmond O'Neill SC put it to Mr Hickey that his payments to Mr Dunlop to make political donations in the run up to the local and general elections were not listed as political donations in the Davy Hickey accounts and were on one occasion described as fees to Mr Dunlop.

Mr Hickey denied he was trying to hide the fact that he had made political donations. It was not something he kept a secret and he was "not ashamed" of it. He said Mr Dunlop had come to him and suggested he made the donation.

Mr Hickey said he had no experience of making such donations, but he thought to do so was reasonable and "very fair" because of the support of politicians of all parties for the Citywest development. The payments had simply been "misdescribed" as fees and there was nothing Machiavellian to them, he said.