From the public sittings this week of the Moriarty tribunal, it appears that money Mr Denis Foley made from running dances in Tralee and Ballybunion during the 1960s and 1970s ended up in the Cayman Islands-linked Ansbacher deposits.
Mr Foley, Fianna Fail TD and former rate collector, is not the sort of person normally associated with the secretive deposits, which were used, in the main, by pillars of the Irish business establishment. What links him with such people is Mr Des Traynor, architect of the deposits and financial adviser to Mr Charles Haughey.
Amazingly, Mr Foley's identity as a depositor was, up until November last, hidden from two top-level inquiries which have been under way since late 1997. Why Mr Foley's involvement should be kept hidden, while powerful business people such as directors of Cement Roadstone or the property developer Mr John Byrne were exposed, is not yet clear, but no doubt it has something to do with him being a sitting TD.
It was the action of a bank official with Guinness & Mahon bank, Ms Margaret Keogh, which led to Mr Foley's exposure. Ms Keogh was Mr Padraig Collery's secretary when he worked at Guinness & Mahon bank. Mr Collery was Mr Traynor's righthand man in this jurisdiction in the running of the Ansbacher deposits. After Mr Traynor died in 1994, Mr Collery became the main operator of the deposits here.
Some time last November, Mr Collery called to see Ms Keogh in Guinness & Mahon bank, St Stephen's Green, and asked her to keep a sealed package in a safe place for him until he would be able to visit his "home place", which she knew to be in Sligo. Ms Keogh became worried the package might contain documents that were being hidden from the Moriarty tribunal.
Ever since the McCracken (Dunnes payments) tribunal discovered the secret Ansbacher deposits in the summer of 1997, Mr Collery has been a key figure. After Mr Traynor died, in 1994, many of the files on the deposits were destroyed or brought back to the Cayman Islands, leaving Mr Collery as the best port of call for any authority conducting an investigation. He still had some files and he knew the identity of a significant number of the depositors.
Mr Collery has been questioned by the McCracken tribunal, the Moriarty tribunal, and Mr Gerard Ryan, an authorised officer who conducted a 20-month inquiry into the deposits. Mr Ryan's report led to the appointment of three High Court inspectors and a copy of the report was given to the Moriarty tribunal. However the report does not name Mr Foley.
The High Court inspectors were appointed in late September and Mr Collery handed the sealed package to Ms Keogh in November. Ms Keogh consulted her solicitor and her solicitor, having examined the documents, contacted the Moriarty tribunal.
It issued an immediate order that the documentation, a substantial part of which was new to the tribunal and contained information critical to its terms of reference, be handed over.
One document identified the owner of an account coded A/ A49 as Mr Foley. The document was generated during a trip Mr Collery made to the Cayman Islands in July 1998, a trip which the tribunal had not known about until Ms Keogh handed over the hidden documents.
Mr Foley withdrew £50,000 from his Ansbacher account in 1995. Mr Collery handed the Dail deputy the money, inside a brown envelope, in a "discreet corner of the bar" in Jurys Hotel. Mr Collery knew since then at least that Mr Foley, a public representative, was a depositor. Mr Collery says he had not been 100 per cent sure that Mr Foley was behind account A/A49, and that was why he had, some time ago, told the tribunal the account belonged to the late Mr John Furze.
One new document shows the balance in Mr Foley's account in July 1998 as £135,000 sterling. A deduction of £5,000 sterling was made from the account in 1997 as a contribution to legal expenses incurred by Mr Furze during a successful court action he took in the Cayman Islands to prevent the McCracken tribunal getting access to documentation held on the islands. Deductions were also made from other accounts. The tribunal revealed that the money was taken from the accounts without the depositors being informed. Mr Foley has said he did not know £5,000 sterling had been taken from his account.
A conclusion which can be drawn from this week's evidence is that the authorities, and the public, are unlikely ever to know the full list of individuals involved in the Ansbacher deposits. Mr Ryan's report contained 120 names, but not that of Mr Foley. Perhaps there is other documentation in existence which identifies other parties, but has not been discovered. It is unlikely that depositors about whom no documentation exists in this jurisdiction will ever be identified.
The dances organised in Tralee and Ballybunion in the 1960s and 1970s were held, respectively, in the Mount Brandon Hotel and the Central Hotel, both of which were, in part, owned by Mr John Byrne. Mr Byrne is a long-time friend of Mr Charles Haughey. Haughey Boland handled Mr Byrne's companies' accounts. Mr Traynor, a tax expert, was the partner in charge of Mr Byrne's affairs. While looking after Mr Byrne's multi-million pound property empire, Mr Traynor also availed of the opportunity to ask his dance-hall manager if he had any funds he wanted salted away.
He said he'd give a good return. Mr Foley took up the offer in 1979. He is now in the process of making a settlement with the Revenue. He has already paid £50,000. He still has his account in the Cayman Islands.
It is worth repeating how the deposits worked. Guinness & Mahon bank on College Green, Dublin, established offshore subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands and the Channel Islands. People who gave funds to Mr Traynor had them lodged in offshore accounts and the offshore banks then re-lodged the overall deposits back with the Dublin bank. In this way, depositors could get access to their money simply by contacting Mr Traynor.
This was contrary to the exchange control regulations then in existence. To avoid constantly slipping money in and out of the State in contravention of the regulations, Mr Traynor would organise switches. This occurred in 1990 with the lodgement of £24,000 made by Mr Foley. Mr Foley had his money in pounds. He gave it to Mr Traynor, who used it to make payments to other depositors here. Mr Traynor then switched the sterling equivalent of £24,000 from these people's offshore accounts into Mr Foley's.
The total amount of money involved in the Ansbacher deposits may have come to hundreds of millions. The Central Bank knew about this since the 1970s. This week the tribunal showed a section of a letter the Central Bank sent to Guinness & Mahon bank expressing concern about the existence of its offshore operations and the giving of so-called back-to-back loans.
These are loans backed by deposits in the Ansbacher accounts. In 1978 there were back-to-back loans totalling £5 million in existence. The system worked like this: money, probably undeclared, was lodged in the Ansbacher deposits. No tax was paid on the interest that accrued. A loan was taken out, secretly backed or secured by the deposits. The person or business who took out the loan then claimed tax relief on the interest which accrued on the loan. It was a double tax fraud.
The Central Bank did nothing. Mr Traynor apparently pointed out to Central Bank officials that they were obliged by law not to disclose their knowledge of the secretive accounts to anyone, including the Revenue. It was the bank's job to impose the foreign exchange regulations then in existence, and which were being flouted by Guinness & Mahon bank. Nothing happened.