NIB offshore customers pay up

More than half the National Irish Bank customers who invested in an unauthorised offshore investment scheme have now settled with the Revenue Commissioners but the majority of Ansbacher depositors are being less co-operative.

Revenue chairman, Mr Dermot Quigley, yesterday said 232 of the 429 NIB customers have made a full settlement which includes tax arrears, hefty penalties and interest on those funds invested in the scheme.

The 232 customers together paid a total of £12.5 million (€15.87 million) to the Revenue while a further £6.97 million has been paid on account by a number of other customers ahead of a settlement. "The total amount to be paid will be higher before the investigation is concluded," Mr Quigley said. By comparison less than 20 of the 120 people named as holding Ansbacher accounts have made a payment on account to the Revenue. These payments amounted to £3 million and none of these cases have been settled. Mr Quigley refused to speculate on the amount of money which could be recovered as a result of this investigation but said potentially the amount was very significant.

The Ansbacher investigation is highly complex and Mr Quigley said that apart from examining the affairs of the 120 named taxpayers they were also looking at 400 other associated entities including trusts, investment companies and offshore companies.

"Many of these transactions go back 30 years but we now have new powers which are extremely useful and are yielding a huge volume of information," Mr Quigley said. "Most of the individuals on the Ansbacher list have been interviewed but we are not satisfied all of them are co-operating with us."

The Revenue was now extending its investigation and would be seeking court orders to compel third parties who were very influential in marketing and packaging offshore trusts to supply key information to them, he said. Meanwhile, the Revenue is continuing to make good progress on its look-back audit at 37 of the State's financial institutions. The audit work has now been completed or is close to completion and the Revenue has entered into discussions with the financial institutions on the terms of a settlement.

Bank of Ireland was the first financial institution to settle its DIRT tax liabilities with the Revenue paying £30.5 million.

Mr Quigley said it would not be appropriate to try to extrapolate or apply multipliers to determine the liability of other banks based on the Bank of Ireland settlement. The Revenue is required to report to the Dail Committee of Public Accounts in October where it will detail the full amount of DIRT tax arrears, interest and penalties which can be recovered from each of the 37 institutions.

Revenue is committing significant resources to these investigations. According to Mr Quigley, some 67 people are working on the audit of the financial institutions while 20 are involved in the Ansbacher investigation.

The additional workload has led to some fall-off in the number of audits carried out by the Revenue in 1999 under the self-assessment system. The Revenue undertook 750 fewer audits during the 12-month period and the total yield fell from £165.1 million in 1998 to £138.2 million last year. Mr Quigley says he expects the audit programme will get back to full capacity this year with the recruitment of 350 additional staff.

The Tanaiste, Ms Harney, said she appreciated that the subject matter of the investigations was difficult and time-consuming. "But it is encouraging to know that they are using the enhanced powers made available in the Finance Act. I hope the Revenue Commissioners will be able to report concrete progress on these investigations in its next annual report."