Celtic £100,000 may have been rerouted to Haughey account

A £100,000 investment for Celtic Helicopters may have found its way into a personal bank account belonging to Mr Charles Haughey, the Moriarty tribunal heard yesterday.

Counsel for the tribunal, Mr John Coughlan SC, said it appeared that a £100,000 cheque drawn on the account of Mr Mike Murphy, Celtic Helicopters' insurance broker, may have passed through a series of other accounts before settling in the S8 Ansbacher account, which was used to pay Mr Haughey's personal bills.

On seeing the evidence, Mr Padraig Collery, the Guinness & Mahon banker who operated the Ansbacher accounts with the late Mr Des Traynor, agreed there seemed to be a link between the withdrawal from Mr Murphy's account and the credit to Mr Haughey's account.

The money trail was shown through a series of documents obtained by the tribunal.

These included a letter from Mike Murphy Insurance Brokers instructing that an Ansbacher account in Zurich be credited with £100,000. A cheque drawn on a Bank of Ireland account belonging to the insurance company was enclosed with the letter, which was dated November 4th, 1992, and sent to Credit Suisse (London).

Reference to the Zurich account was made in a fax from Mr Traynor to the Cayman banker, the late Mr John Furze, on November 2nd, 1992. Sent from Mr Traynor's Cement Roadstone offices at 42 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin, it read: "I have arranged to debit £52,500 to your sub-company account at IIB as agreed in connection with a similar amount lodged in Zurich. I understand that there is a further amount in the order of £100,000 to arrive in Zurich this week. As soon as you know, perhaps you would advise."

Mr Collery said he believed the fax came from files kept by Mr Traynor in respect of Celtic Helicopters. The tribunal was then shown a letter sent by Ansbacher Ltd from 42 Fitzwilliam Square to Irish Intercontinental Bank (IIB), to which the Ansbacher deposits had been moved from Guinness & Mahon in the early 1990s.

Also dated November 2nd 1992, the letter asked for IIB to arrange for the exchange of £52,500 sterling into Irish pounds. The sum amounted to £47,532.82.

Mr Jerry Healy SC, counsel for the tribunal, said this sum was equivalent to a payment which had been credited to Celtic Helicopters.

A further letter from Ansbacher Ltd to IIB, dated November 25th 1992, requested that the Ansbacher No 2 account be debited with £108,017.69 sterling and a Hamilton Ross account, numbered 02/01354/81, be credited with the same sum.

A copy of a statement for the Ansbacher No 2 account showed a withdrawal of £108,017.69 sterling on November 26th 1992. A statement of the Hamilton Ross IIB account showed a corresponding lodgement.

Another Ansbacher statement showed a lodgement in the S8 account of £108,017.69 sterling on November 30th, 1992.

The lodgement was made two weeks prior to a £84,800 sterling lodgement, equivalent to £80,000. The tribunal heard evidence last week to suggest that this £80,000 had been channelled into the S8 account through the Ansbacher accounts and had formed part of a £180,000 payment from Dunnes Stores.

Mr Collery identified the S8 account as that used by Mr Jack Stakelum to pay Mr Haughey's bills.

Mr Collery said the evidence suggested that the £100,000 drawn from the account of Mike Murphy Insurance Brokers corresponded with the deposit referred to in the fax from Mr Traynor to Mr Furze.