Memo composed on St Patrick's Day

St Patrick's Day celebrations and a few beers led to the creation of an alleged fraudulent invoice, a former company chief admitted yesterday.

Mr John O'Brien (45), accused of rigging the success of a £7.2 million sterling (€11.4 million) share issue for London-based Alliance Resources, denied there was anything sinister in the accounting.

The former Alliance chief executive said he had merely provided a $457,000 (€451,135) stopgap to satisfy legal advisers as a debt had to be settled before the company went to the stock market to raise funds to exploit a mineral strike in North America.

London's Southwark Crown Court heard the money was owed by a third party company over the purchase of shares. Mr O'Brien, from Co Cork, said he had paid the money through one of his offshore companies - later clawing it back by invoicing Alliance for "technical services" provided by another of his Isle of Man administered concerns.

He told a jury the solution was provided by Alliance company secretary Mr Nicholas Grey.

"I had no problem paying the money," he said. "But I could not understand all the cloak-and-dagger stuff and what the hell was going on."

A memo and the invoice are known to the court as the St Patrick's Day Documents, but Mr O'Brien denies it was a dishonest move meant to deceive advisers before the Alliance rights issue. He told the court: "It was St Patrick's Day. We were celebrating our national day over a few pints. I asked Grey to take care of it. This memo is a good example of something composed by Grey and I signed it." And he maintained: "All that happened is that I paid some money over." Asked if the true situation was he was dishonestly involved in creating bogus papers, he replied: `I totally reject that . . . absolutely not." Mr O'Brien, from Midleton, denies five counts of forgery, two offences of false accounting and two charges under the Financial Services Act. He is alleged to have engaged in an elaborate deception and lied to investors over Alliance's share issue in April 1995.

The trial continues.