The former Guinness & Mahon banker, Mr Padraig Collery, was at the receiving end all day yesterday of the toughest examination seen to date at the Moriarty tribunal.
Mr Collery, who took over the Irish end of the Ansbacher deposits after the death in 1994 of Mr Des Traynor, was told on a number of occasions by Mr John Coughlan SC, for the tribunal, that his evidence was not credible. The chairman also voiced his frustration with Mr Collery.
At the heart of the matter is the fact that the Fianna Fail TD for Kerry North, Mr Denis Foley, had an account in the secret deposits and that Mr Collery had known this since at least 1995, yet withheld the information.
Mr Collery, in sworn evidence to a hearing some time ago from which the public was excluded, identified who owned the various coded accounts held within the deposits. However, he told the tribunal that Mr Foley's account belonged to the late Cayman banker, Mr John Furze.
Unlike other depositors, Mr Foley, as someone who fell within the tribunal's terms of reference, would have been identified publicly by the tribunal had he been named. Mr Collery said he had come under no pressure to withhold the TD's name, nor was he offered any inducements.
It was, Mr Coughlan forced Mr Collery to agree, "significant" that Mr Collery chose not to tell the truth about an account which belonged to a member of the Oireachtas.
Mr Collery revealed that he had failed to identify Mr Foley to all the statutory and other investigations currently under way into the Ansbacher deposits until the existence of Mr Foley's account was discovered by the tribunal. The Revenue Commissioners, three High Court inspectors, the McCracken tribunal and an authorised officer, Mr Gerry Ryan, are all investigating or have investigated the Ansbacher deposits.
Mr Collery's reason for withholding Mr Foley's name is, he admits, inadequate. He knew Mr Foley had been a depositor since 1995, as he had in that year delivered £50,000 to Mr Foley from his account.
However, at a meeting at Dublin Airport in August 1998, held at Mr Foley's request, the Kerry TD told Mr Collery his account should be held in the name of his daughter, or in his and his daughter's names. Because of this confusion over the true ownership of the account, Mr Collery said, he had informed the tribunal it belonged to Mr Furze.
At the August 1998 airport meeting, Mr Collery told the TD he had been to the Cayman Islands the previous month and that his account was in his name. Mr Foley has reportedly said it was only in November 1999 that he learned his offshore account was in the Ansbacher deposits.
Mr Collery agreed with Mr Coughlan that he was aware at the time of his deception of the legal obligations he was under, and the potential consequences.
Mr Collery said he feared his home was about to be raided, and this was the reason he removed documents relevant to the Moriarty tribunal and left them with a former colleague in Guinness & Mahon bank in November 1999. These documents had not been given to the tribunal and identified "D. Foley" as the owner of an account. The former colleague at the bank brought the documents to the tribunal's attention.
The documents included the balances in the approximately 20 Cayman accounts controlled by a Cayman company called Hamilton Ross. Mr Collery said he wanted these balances in case anyone ever tried to sue him.
He said his concern about what might eventually happen in relation to the money now controlled in the Cayman Islands by Mr Barry Benjamin was increased by the content of an interview with Mr Benjamin in The Irish Times on Monday.
Mr Coughlan said "what is going on in Cayman in relation to other people's money" was a matter for Mr Collery and Mr Benjamin but that did not explain why he withheld documents from the tribunal.
Mr Foley was present in the public gallery for the examination of Mr Collery. He is likely to take the stand today, and must be feeling apprehensive about the prospect.