OVERVIEW: The Ansbacher report may not lead to prison sentences, but is still a ground-breaking development that it was published at all, writes Colm Keena
The long-awaited Ansbacher report, despite its size, has failed to deliver the sort of bombshell revelation or revelations many may have expected.
It is the accumulated detail that is shocking. The dinner-party conversation which led to the opening of an Ansbacher account; the restaurant bills being settled by the customer putting the required amount into an offshore account belonging to the restaurateur; the widow being contacted to be told her late husband had a Cayman trust and subsequently gaining access to the money by way of travellers cheques and deposits to a London bank account.
A picture emerges of a busy subterranean banking service, always at work, helping people hide money away where others won't be able to find it. While the fact that a particular person has been named as a customer of Ansbacher is not in itself proof of tax-evasion, the broad general picture which emerges is nevertheless of a whole class of people intent on evading tax.
In all cases the key person was the late Des Traynor. It seems that wherever he went he was able to find new customers for the bank he'd established in the Caribbean. He collected money before and after boardroom meetings, while waiting in the lobby for whoever he was lunching with that day in the Berkeley Court Hotel and when people dropped in to see him in his office.
The list of names includes some very significant figures from the Irish corporate world of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
They include members of the board of the Central Bank; members of the board of Cement Roadstone, one of the State's foremost companies; members of the boards of State companies.
The peculiar mix of people in the report is explained by its origins. Back in the late 1960s, Guinness & Mahon, according to the report, was run by three men from a "similar Anglo-Irish Protestant privileged background".
All three had gone to the same school. According to one of them, Mr Willliam Forwood, they decided that what the bank needed was someone "who was in touch with the outside world . . . They agreed there was only one man for the job, Desmond Traynor".
Within a short time after his appointment, Mr Traynor had the run of the bank. He brought some of the clients he knew from his work with Haughey Boland into the offshore business he developed for the old merchant bank. As the offshore subsidiaries grew in size, their importance to the overall Guinness Mahon group business gave Mr Traynor increased power within the group.
The clients included old customers of Guinness & Mahon, many of them from a similar background to Mr Forwood and his colleagues' and representatives of the emerging Catholic capitalist class Mr Traynor knew from his Haughey Boland days.
Unfortunately the inspectors were not able to give a conclusive figure for the size of the offshore business built up.
In 1984 the Cayman bank had £203 million on deposit, with £25 million of this being redeposited in Dublin. In the years 1991 to 1997 Ansbacher and the related company, Hamilton Ross, passed £96 million through IIB bank in Dublin.
These figures give an indication of the scale, rather than a precise take. The Cayman bank had customers from Ireland, the UK, the US and Jamaica.
While significant figures from the world of Irish business were customers of Mr Traynor, very few are members of the super-rich league. Such people presumably had people other than Mr Traynor looking after their affairs.
The report is damning for Cement Roadstone Holdings (CRH), detailing as it does how Ansbacher held important meetings in the CRH headquarters in Dublin, how so many CRH directors had dealings with Ansbacher and how Ansbacher mail was delivered to the CRH headquarters in Fitzwilliam Square and sorted by the caretaker there.
The inspectors write of Ms Joan Williams, secretary to Mr Traynor, openly counting cash at her desk and Mr Traynor's driver and the CRH caretaker personally delivering boxes of cash to Ansbacher clients' homes.
Mr Charles Haughey was, of course, Mr Traynor's most famous client. A busy, able and extremely discreet man, Mr Traynor was also engaged in collecting money from wealthy individuals for Mr Haughey.
A number of those on the Ansbacher list were close associates of Mr Haughey.
Some gave him, or his son's company Celtic Helicopters, financial assistance; some were financial supporters of Fianna Fáil and some were involved in the controversial Fianna Fáil fund-raising group, Taca. Mr Traynor's long friendship with Mr Haughey and work with Haughey Boland make this unsurprising.
This is, however, a key aspect of the overall Ansbacher story. It has no relevance at all for most of the customers other than they now find themselves associated with a scheme identified in the public mind with unease at aspects of public business during the Haughey era.
Also, of course, if Haughey had not been involved, this offshore-onshore unauthorised banking service would never have been the subject of such a detailed inquiry and comprehensive published report.
Some clients, it should be said, were supporters of Fine Gael and of course the late Hugh Coveney made use of Ansbacher in his business activities.
The report gives an insight into Irish business and finance during the period covered. Ansbacher took subterfuge to an extreme and, crucially, was not licensed to operate here. Its story forms part of a picture which includes bogus non-resident accounts in AIB, ACC and other banks and the sale of offshore bonds by NIB.
We also know of the dealings of Mr Michael Lowry and Mr Ben Dunne involving offshore accounts with AIB and Bank of Ireland and of the Irish Nationwide Isle of Man's refusal to send an official to give evidence to the Moriarty tribunal about an account belonging to Mr Lowry.
Perhaps, in time, new elements will be added to the scene.
No one may ever go to jail because of what has been revealed by the Ansbacher report. Nevertheless it is surely a ground-breaking event that it has been published at all. The public can now at least expect that the Revenue Commissioners will collect all that is due. Openness, transparency and a limited amount of accountability.