Des Traynor, who was born in 1931, was the first articled clerk taken on by Haughey Boland, the accountancy company set up by Charles Haughey and Harry Boland.
A graduate of Westland Row CBS and St Mary's College, Rathmines, he was articled to Mr Haughey in 1951 and the two became close. They were to remain friends and associates over the following 43 years, during which time Traynor played a central role in organising funding for Mr Haughey.
Mr Traynor played an important role in developing Haughey Boland into a significant force. He was appointed director of the main companies of property developers and Haughey associates, Matt Gallagher and John Byrne, including Gallagher's bank, Merchant Banking Ltd. In December, 1969, he left Haughey Boland and the board of the Gallagher companies to take up the position of joint managing director of Guinness & Mahon Bank. A year later, in 1971, he founded a branch of the bank on the Cayman Islands; Guinness Mahon Cayman Trust.
Over the following years the Cayman bank developed, taking on Irish customers who wanted to salt away money in an offshore location. Mr Traynor, based in Dublin, formed the centre of a web of subsidiary banks in the Channel Islands, Zurich and the Cayman Islands.
After Mr Traynor left G&M in 1986 he continued to operate this secret financial service from the offices of Cement Roadstone Holdings on Fitzwilliam Square.
During his evidence to the Moriarty Tribunal Mr Timothy O'Grady Walshe, a former general manager of the Central Bank, made some observations about Mr Traynor. He said he was tough, "very clever, very skilful", and would "have exploited the limits of the law to the utmost", but that he would not have gone outside the law. If Mr Traynor was alive he "would make a good job of proving that what he was doing (in the late 1970s) was within the law", Mr O'Grady Walshe said.