Lodgment 'equates precisely' to £25,000

Manchester:An Irish pounds lodgment to an account of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in October 1994 "equates precisely" to £25,000 sterling when one of the sterling exchange rates applied on the day by the bank was used, the tribunal heard.

Mr Ahern has told the tribunal the lodgment consisted of IR£16,500 cash he received from friends, and £8,000 sterling cash he received during a function in Manchester.

The two amounts were lodged to AIB, O'Connell Street, Dublin, on October 11th, 1994. The total amount lodged was IR£24,838.49.

The amount lodged equals precisely what would have been received for £25,000 sterling, "if the teller had applied the rate of exchange appropriate to a sterling note transaction to a value of up to IR£2,500 and had charged the £5 maximum commission chargeable on the transaction", tribunal counsel Des O'Neill SC said yesterday.

Banks apply different exchange rates depending on the amount of money being exchanged, Mr O'Neill said. He said another transaction being investigated may have involved an inappropriate exchange rate being applied by the bank.

Mr Ahern has said the lodgment included IR£16,500 and the remainder of the lodgment was what was received for the sterling deposited at the same time. This would be IR£8,338.49.

However, this figure (IR£8,338.49) does not equate to a round-figure sterling amount when exchange rates and commission are applied. Also, the bank did not accept fractions of £1 sterling for exchange purposes.

"It appears, therefore, that the lodgment of IR£24,838.49 could not have been made up of IR£16,500 and the sterling equivalent of IR£8,338.49," Mr O'Neill said.

The available bank records show sterling worth a total of IR£27,491.95 was purchased in foreign exchange transactions by the bank branch concerned on that day.

"These figures allow for a single transaction involving the exchange of sterling £25,000," Mr O'Neill said.

Mr O'Neill said that during the current module, the tribunal would inquire into whether the lodgment made in October 1994 was composed of a loan from friends of IR£16,500 and a balance in sterling from a Manchester dinner presentation.

He said the tribunal's initial inquiries of AIB in relation to a number of transactions involving Mr Ahern had not revealed that they were preceded by foreign exchange transactions.

Presumably the bank had not believed there were any foreign exchange transactions linked to the lodgments, Mr O'Neill said.

The tribunal was alerted to the possibility that there might have been foreign exchange transactions by the fact that the figures involved were for large amounts, but included coins or fractions of a pound.

It also noted that stamps on the lodgment dockets showed the transactions were processed at the bank's foreign exchange desk.

A transcript of yesterday's proceedings can be read on www.flood-tribunal.ie