Mahon (formerly Flood) Tribunal: More than £600,000 sterling in Mr Liam Lawlor's offshore accounts in Liechtenstein represented the proceeds of two land deals in Dublin, the tribunal has heard.
Mr Des O'Neill SC, for the tribunal, said this was a "radically different explanation" for the deposits from the one Mr Lawlor gave to the tribunal in 2000.
On that occasion, Mr Lawlor had claimed that the money represented two loans from Longwater Investments, a Bahamian-registered company controlled by a Jersey solicitor, Mr David Morgan, and, after his death, his family trust. It was used to defray Mr Lawlor's costs when under financial pressure in the mid-1990s. However, Mr O'Neill said this version had always been viewed by the tribunal with "deep scepticism". Why would a trust lend substantial sums of money to a person in another jurisdiction and who was in dire financial straits? And why were no steps taken to protect the loans, and no repayments made? It also emerged that Mr Lawlor used a password to gain access to his account with the Landesbank in Liechtenstein, but did not reveal this to the tribunal.
Mr O'Neill said the code word "Lucan" was needed to trigger a response from the bank, yet it took two years for this information to come out.
Yesterday, Mr O'Neill linked the Landesbank funds to the proceeds of two land deals at Coolamber, in Lucan, and Baldoyle.
In 1987, Mr Lawlor was involved in the purchase of 55 acres of agricultural land near his home at Coolamber. One of his companies, Advanced Proteins, forwarded £220,000 for the property, ownership of which passed through a series of offshore companies. At the time, Mr Lawlor was a client of tax lawyer Mr John Caldwell, who was a director of one of the companies.
The land was rezoned after a period. Mr Lawlor claimed a share of the profit realised on the transaction, but this was disputed by Mr Caldwell. In 1995, the two men agreed to settle their dispute, with the payment to Mr Lawlor of £350,000 by Mr Caldwell.
Mr Morgan arranged this with an 825,000 deutschmark lodgement to the politician's bank account in Liechtenstein. Two years later, Mr Lawlor made a further claim for the share of the profits arising from a land sale in Baldoyle, and £335,000 was lodged to the account.
Mr O'Neill said the tribunal wasn't adopting either explanation of the money in Mr Lawlor's offshore account at this stage.
However, the land deal explanation which had been found in documents that Mr Lawlor had not declared to the High Court had "enormous significance" for the tribunal's treatment of his non-compliance with its orders.
"You took the money, you spent the money, there was no question of it ever being a loan," he declared.