ANALYSIS:The tribunal has found sterling lodgements of up to £49,000 in October 1994 alone, writes Colm Keena Public Affairs Correspondent.
FORMER TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern denied yesterday he ever had a bank or building society account outside the jurisdiction, but it would be an obvious explanation for a number of aspects of what has emerged about his personal finances in the mid-1990s.
It could explain where his surplus income was going in the period 1987 to 1993. He has said he did not have any bank account during the period and saved his surplus income in cash, in a safe. He has said he accumulated £54,000 in Irish cash, and £15,500 in sterling cash, but no one can confirm this.
He began using bank accounts after November 1993, when he had finalised his separation agreement with his wife Miriam. In the two years after that date, lodgements to his accounts examined by the tribunal exceeded his income by a factor of more than two but the source of this money cannot be demonstrated.
If he had lodged money in an undisclosed account in the period up to November 1993, then this would explain where the excess money came from when he opened accounts in his name after his separation.
An account in the sterling area would explain why so many sterling lodgements have emerged as a result of the tribunal's inquiries. Only one of these sterling lodgements was discovered by Ahern to the tribunal, prior to it discovering them by itself. The one he did disclose was part of a lodgement that bank records showed was made at a foreign exchange desk.
Ahern said he lodged £8,000 sterling, along with Irish cash, to an AIB account on October 11th, 1994. He said he was given the sterling during a trip to Manchester. However, the tribunal discovered that exchange rates in use on the day indicated that the total amount lodged equalled exactly £25,000 sterling.
The other sterling lodgements were discovered by the tribunal. In March 1994 £6,000 sterling was lodged to accounts with the Irish Permanent Building Society, Drumcondra, belonging to Ahern and his two daughters. In May £5,500 sterling was lodged to the same accounts. On October 28th, 1994, £4,000 was lodged to his account there.
An account in the same building society called the B/T account, which is being investigated by the tribunal, had £20,000 sterling lodged to it on October 26th, 1994. Taking the B/T, AIB and personal building society accounts together, £32,000 sterling, or £49,000 sterling, was lodged over 17 days in October 1994. The difference depends on what the tribunal finds in relation to the AIB lodgement.
On June 22nd, 1995, £10,000 sterling was lodged to an AIB account in the name of Celia Larkin; and on December 1st, 1995, £20,000 was lodged to an account in Ahern's name there. That brings the total to £62,000 sterling, or £79,000 sterling, depending on how the tribunal rules on the October 1994 AIB lodgement.
Ahern says his primary and almost his sole source of income during the period being investigated was his salary from his work as a politician. Apart from the £8,000 sterling mentioned above, he says the building society sterling in his and his daughters' accounts, and the AIB sterling lodged in 1995, is salary income he held in Irish cash, converted to sterling cash, held for a period, and then lodged.
Remarkably, the same withdrawal/exchange/relodgement explanation has been given for the B/T lodgement. The operator of this account, Tim Collins, says he took out £20,000 in cash and left it with Joe Burke to pay for work on St Luke's. Joe Burke says it was decided not to go ahead with the work but he had in the meantime spent some of the cash. However, he had sterling cash so he left £20,000 sterling back in St Luke's for Collins to collect and relodge. Collins says he didn't relodge the money. It is not known who did.
A more simple explanation would be if there was a mother lode of sterling somewhere, or some other source of sterling, from which the lodgements to accounts linked to Ahern were being made.
The existence of an account that has not been disclosed would explain another aspect of Ahern's finances that emerged yesterday.
The tribunal has focused on 86 substantial lodgements made by Ahern between when he opened bank accounts after the conclusion of the separation agreement with his wife, and the end of 1995. It has not found one lodgement that equates exactly with an amount of money Ahern had been paid in a salary cheque.
The indications yesterday were that the tribunal doesn't have documentary evidence of a single salary cheque being lodged directly and on its own to any of the accounts Ahern opened after November 1993.
Ahern says some of the lodgements are accumulated cheques, or lodgements where cheques were cashed and only some of the funds were lodged, but many observers believe the tribunal is past taking Ahern's evidence at face value.
Comments made by Ahern himself seemed to indicate that it was only in the period since 1997, ie after he became Taoiseach, that his salary began to be lodged directly into his bank accounts. The tribunal's inquiries cover his finances up the end of 1995.