Collery paid £0.4m for work on offshore bank accounts

Former Guinness & Mahon banker, Mr Padraig Collery, received more than £400,000 sterling for helping administer offshore bank accounts over a period of 10 years, the Moriarty tribunal heard yesterday. More than half the money was paid to Mr Collery in the two years before the McCracken tribunal began investigating the Ansbacher accounts. The money was paid in sterling into an offshore account. At one point, Ansbacher bank was paying Mr Collery £1,000 a month to look after just one client's account.

When the McCracken tribunal began in 1997, Mr Collery gave £264,000 to the Revenue Commissioners as "a payment on account". Unlike other Ansbacher account holders, Mr Collery has succeeded in closing his account and having his money returned.

Mr Collery's account opened in 1986 - the year Mr Desmond Traynor left Guinness & Mahon bank - with a balance of £1,700. Regular payments of £125 were lodged to the account in the following months, with payments of £1,000 "from time to time".

Mr Collery said he would "have to come in on a Saturday" to deal with the offshore accounts, and consequently he thought it reasonable to be paid extra for the task.

By February 1989, the balance in his account had grown to some £13,000. In February 1991, it had reached £55,800. Three years later, the total amount of money in the account was £87,500.

On February 24th, 1995, £176,101.67 was lodged to the account. The lodgement represented about half of the balance in a Hamilton Ross suspense account and it was paid to Mr Collery by the Cayman Islands company after Mr Traynor's death in May 1994. The account had been used before then to hold fees paid on the offshore accounts as well as the profit made by Hamilton Ross on interest accumulated by the accounts. Mr Collery agreed with counsel for the tribunal, Mr John Coughlan SC, that after appropriate deductions the account balance "would have represented the bottom line on profit for Hamilton Ross".

The 50 per cent share of the Hamilton Ross suspense account was paid over by the Cayman banker, Mr John Furze, who Mr Collery says told him: "In view of the assistance you've given Mr Traynor over the years . . . I think the fairest thing I can do is split the balance in two."

Half the money went to Mr Collery, the other half to the Poinciana Fund - "a vehicle of Mr Traynor's" over which there was a discretionary trust. However, the fund didn't technically come under Mr Traynor's estate when he died.

In April 1995, a further £35,000 was credited to Mr Collery's account. A year later, £55,000 was lodged by Cayman banker, Mr Furze for work Mr Collery had done on Hamilton Ross accounts.

A few days later, Ansbacher Cayman paid £12,000 to the account as a "retainer" of £1,000 per month for Mr Collery's services. Ansbacher paid him the retainer to deal with the sole Irish client it retained from 1996. The account holder was not identified at the tribunal yesterday, but Mr Collery agreed he was a "significant client". Aside from that customer, between 1995 and 1997 Mr Collery carried out just one other task for an Ansbacher client.

By April 1997, the balance in Mr Collery's account had reached almost £340,000. When interest was applied, the balance topped £363,000. He said he had decided to declare the account to the Revenue very soon after the McCracken tribunal began.

"I did not want any more revenue accruing to me because if I did it was a pure taxable matter." Mr Couglan replied: "But there was no reason that you couldn't be paid if you declared your income to the Revenue."

Mr Collery responded: "I can assure you I wanted to close this book in my life and get finished with it . . . I wanted and I still do earnestly I can assure you, to get on with my life. "It was just not possible for me to provide this service and further my career, which was most important to me here in Ireland," Mr Collery said.