No strings attached by the hero with the zeros

POOR Ben. The only thing he ever got from those mean old politicians was a £1.50 pen. Party officials and their masters trooped into Dublin Castle yesterday to repeat the same mantra. The cash came with no wish list attached and no favours offered. The man paid his money, made his excuses and left.

Only Quizmaster Quinn deviated from the party line. Yes, Ruairi Quinn offered Ben a little something for himself - the pen he handed Ben to fill in the zeros on the £15,000 cheque for the Mary Robinson campaign.

Ruairi played quizmaster that night for the Rathgar Labour Club pub quiz in the Barge. They were expecting to make a few hundred quid. Then he bumped into Ben and bingo! A £15,000 cheque, enough for 10,000 new pens.

The wily quizmaster had earlier slipped past a press pack waiting to photograph his tribunal tie. As they were distracted by another party official, he walked up quietly behind them and squeezed through the throng.

Someone twigged, but it was too late. They roared at him to turn around and he sailed on, smiling like the cat more than happy to tell the tribunal where he got the cream.

Dick Spring looked amused and then slightly pained as counsel for the tribunal asked him if there were any strings attached when Ben poured £50,000 into Waterworld.

In his nine minutes in the witness box, Spring said it was a perfectly ordinary thing for a local politician to approach a local businessman for a contribution to a local project. "I wouldn't have offered any political favours. There were none being offered. There were none sought."

Two Isle of Man money men had been flown in and they listed the familiar locations in the alleged money trail.

The first banker, Albert Dudgeon, never spoke to Ben and only dealt in writing with Ben's solicitor, Noel Smyth. The second, Julian Harper, dealt only in phone calls from Ben, or BD, as they knew him in the office.

Harper's relationship with BD was obviously warmer than the expected clinical business deals between client and financial adviser. He was asked if he thought the requests for sensitive" transactions involving large sums of money were unusual. He said nothing BD did could be called unusual because everything he did was unusual.

And had Ben ever mentioned Charlie to him? he was asked. "He did," Harper said. "But I can't remember for the life of me what he said . . ." Laughter from the gallery drowned out the end of the sentence. Harper thought Ben once mentioned that Charlie was skint.

Pat Farrell, Fianna Fail general secretary, was thanked by Mr Justice McCracken for the mountain of paperwork he'd climbed to contact 3,000 Fianna Fail organisations to find out about every donation from Dunnes Stores. "It's been very helpful," the chairman said.