Former taoiseach Bertie Ahern has said sterling lodged to his building society account in 1994 came from income he had converted into sterling, or sterling won in horse racing bets. Colm Keena, Public Affairs Correspondent, reports from Dublin Castle.
Mr Ahern told the Mahon tribunal that in the early 1990s he exchange income from his political work into sterling when he was considering investing in an apartment in Manchester.
He said he changed approximately £12,000 into sterling, in amounts of £2,000 to £3,000 at a time, exchanging the currencies with the late Tim Kilroe, a successful Irish businessman based in Manchester.
Mr Ahern said he stored the sterling in his safe but in 1993 he decided not to go ahead with the purchase of the apartment, which was being built on Salford Quay, Manchester.
He said that until the recent discovery of documents showing sterling being lodged to his building society account, he had believed he had expended the sterling and/or used it while placing bets.
However he said he must now conclude that the money was lodged to his account, and accounts of his daughters, in a series of lodgements, totalling £15,450, on three dates during 1994.
Mr Ahern also said, in a statement to the tribunal, that he won some racing bets in 1996 and was certain he had lodged the sterling received, to the accounts of his daughters.
Earlier, Mr Ahern accepted that evidence he gave to the tribunal in February of this year about lodgements to his Irish Permanent account in Drumcondra, Dublin in 1994, was incorrect.
Resuming his evidence to the tribunal’s ongoing inquiry into his personal finances, Mr Ahern said he accepted that records from the building society’s archives show sterling cash was lodged to his account and those of his daughters. The total involved was £15,450. In February Mr Ahern told the tribunal that the lodgements were the proceeds of his salary cheques being cashed and some of the money lodged.
The tribunal broke for lunch before Mr Ahern was asked to explain how sterling came to be lodged to his account in 1994.
Mr Ahern said he accepted the lodgements were sterling when he saw the building society records on March 7th or 8th of this year. He said he was in the Dáil on the 11th and 12th, attended a European Council meeting on the 13th and 14th, and then went to the United States. He had only a brief conversation with his legal team before leaving for the US, he said, and returned on March 19th.
A former secretary of Mr Ahern’s, Gráinne Carruth, gave evidence to the tribunal about the lodgements on March 19th and 20th last. On her second day in the witness box she accepted, on the basis of the documents shown to her, that the lodgements were made by her and involved sterling.
However she said she had no memory of making sterling lodgements. She said the lodgements would have been made at the direction of Mr Ahern.
Mr Ahern said he also accepted on the basis of the building society records that a £20,000 lodgement to the B/T account in the Drumcondra branch, in October 1994, was a sterling lodgement. He said he didn’t make the lodgement.
The tribunal has already been told by Tim Collins, who operated the account, that he did not make the lodgement, and by Joe Burke, who has said he left the sterling in Mr Ahern’s constituency office St Luke’s for Mr Collins to collect, that he did not make the lodgement either.