From the evidence yesterday it is now clear that Mr Denis Foley not only had an account in the Ansbacher deposits since 1979 but also a company he was involved with took out a £70,000 loan, backed by the deposits, in 1972.
The company, Central Tourist Holdings Ltd, owned the Central Hotel in Ballybunion and organised dances there. It took out the loan from Guinness & Mahon bank and its directors signed guarantees. The directors included Mr Foley and Mr John Byrne, the hugely successful property developer whose companies have been disclosed as having had dealings totalling £17.5 million sterling with the Ansbacher deposits in the years 1991 to 1997.
Internal bank memoranda noted that the loan to Central Tourist Holdings was "adequately secured", a code used in the bank to mean it was secretly backed by money in the Ansbacher deposits.
Initially, interest on the loan was paid as it accrued, but later it was allowed to mount up. By September 1985, by which time Mr Foley was a TD, the loan had grown to £135,510. It was paid off that month, with most of the money coming from the pooled Ansbacher account held by Guinness & Mahon bank. This was highly unusual, as it left a money trail linking the company with the Ansbacher deposits.
Soon afterwards, Haughey Boland, auditors to Central Tourist Holdings, wrote to the bank looking for a certificate showing the company's accounts at end October 1985. Two new accounts were opened, a loan taken out from one, and the loaned money lodged in the other. Then a certificate was issued showing the balance in the loan account but failing to mention the account which had received the money loaned. On November 4th, the transactions were reversed. In other words, the loan for £135,510, the exact amount paid back on the original loan, was issued for the purposes of allowing the certificate to be issued, and was then paid back. The late Mr Des Traynor was head of Guinness & Mahon bank at the time of this deception.
The effects of the deception are twofold: it would have allowed the company to claim the loan against tax; and it hid the fact that the original loan had been paid off, thereby preventing anyone discovering the money trail. A similar deception was repeated the following year.
The former Cayman banker Mr Padraig Collery earned more than £400,000 sterling (£520,000 at today's exchange rate) running the Ansbacher deposits from 1989 to March 1997, counsel for the tribunal, Mr John Coughlan SC, revealed. The payments, for part-time work carried out mainly on Saturday mornings, were lodged to Mr Collery's Ansbacher account.
In March 1997 the McCracken tribunal discovered the deposits and that same month, Mr Collery said, his payments stopped and he revealed the payments to the Revenue Commissioners. He paid the Revenue £264,000 on account from his Ansbacher account - this stopped interest accruing on his unpaid taxes. He is understood to be in ongoing negotiations with the Revenue.
Mr Collery was receiving payments from at least 1986 but the rate of pay really took off after the death of Mr Des Traynor in 1994, after which Mr Collery became the main agent for the secretive banking system here.
Around 1995 Ansbacher bank in the Cayman Islands, being unhappy with the whole Dublin arrangement, began to withdrew the deposits it controlled. Some of the money, however, was under the control of the Cayman banker, the late Mr John Furze, and specifically Hamilton Ross Co Ltd, a company he owned. The Hamilton Ross deposits were left in Dublin. Mr Collery made more than half of his money looking after these deposits between January 1995 and March 1997. He received £176,000 sterling in February 1995, half the then accumulated profits of Hamilton Ross. After 1995 Ansbacher Cayman continued to pay Mr Collery a retainer of £1,000 sterling a month. This was so that Mr Collery could act as the bank's agent for the "most significant client in Ireland that Ansbacher had funds in respect of". The identity of this person was not revealed.
Once again yesterday Mr Collery failed to give an explanation which satisfied Mr Coughlan as to why he concealed Mr Foley's identity during the past two years. Mr Coughlan twice made the point that Mr Collery has only helped the tribunal in relation to matters it, the tribunal, had discovered by itself.
Mr Collery looks set to leave the witness-box today without giving a fresh explanation. The authorities he withheld the information from included not only the tribunal but also Mr Gerry Ryan, the authorised officer appointed by the Tanaiste, Ms Harney.
His deception of Mr Ryan led to Mr Foley not coming to the attention of the Revenue Commissioners. The deception took place over a two-year period, and Mr Foley's name, as a sitting TD, was probably the one most pertinent to the tribunal's work. Mr Collery again denied yesterday that he had been pressurised or given any inducement to engage in this deception.