Ansbacher account used for major share deals on Australian market

An account in the Ansbacher deposits was used for the buying and selling of shares, mostly in Australia, according to the Ansbacher inspectors' report.

The inspectors concluded that the account was owned by Australian businessman Mr Ron Woss, even though Irish businessman Mr Sam Field-Corbett, who was associated with the account, said he did not believe that to be the case.

The report also and separately disclosed that Mr Woss acted as a director of two companies that were ultimately owned by a Cayman Islands trust established by property developer Mr John Byrne.

Both Mr Woss and Mr Field-Corbett have served as directors of UK-registered company Tepbrook Properties. Mr Woss was a director of an Australian company, Danstar Holdings, which was also owned by the trust.

Mr Woss did not respond to inquiries from the inspectors. Mr Woss was once investigated and charged in connection with tax evasion in Australia relating to a "bottom-of-the-harbour" scheme. These were schemes that operated in Australia in the 1980s and involved the owners of companies facing large tax bills selling the companies to intermediaries who then destroyed the companies' records, making it impossible for the tax to be collected. In some cases, the records were scattered at the bottom of Sydney Harbour.

The Australian embassy in Dublin has passed on information concerning Mr Woss and his connection with Ansbacher to the relevant authorities in Australia.

According to the inspectors' report, Mr Field-Corbett - a Dublin businessman and a friend and colleague of the late Des Traynor - said the account in the Ansbacher Deposits belonged to a Cayman trust, the Diamond Trust.

The account involved "quite a lot of buying and selling of shares, in Australia mainly. The people involved were [first name blanked out in report\], Ron Woss, John Furze. They were the three involved."

Mr Field-Corbett said he did not have much involvement in the matter until after Mr Traynor died in 1994. According to the transcript of an interview with Mr Field-Corbett, this prompted one of the inspectors, Judge Sean O'Leary, to say: "Mr Field-Corbett, you are not suffering from any disease which would impair your memory now, are you?"

The judge said the records of IIB Bank were "littered" with references to Mr Field-Corbett and the trust account, before Mr Traynor's death.

Mr Field-Corbett said he sent weekly faxes to Australia concerning the account. The information was given to him each week by Guinness & Mahon or, later, IIB Bank. These are the two Dublin banks that held the Ansbacher deposits.

"I got bank statements in, we faxed them off, and that was all I did," he said.

Mr Field-Corbett said he did not know who the beneficial owner of the account was.

"The only people who were involved in that are as follows; John Furze; Ron Woss; and [name blanked out in report\]. To my knowledge, \ was the stockbroker. Ron Woss was the adviser and he has, actually, told me it was not his, and the only fellow left is John Furze."

He said he did not know if the account belonged to Mr Traynor or to the late Cayman banker, Mr Furze. He said he met Mr Woss at Mr Traynor's funeral. He said Mr Woss had told him he was not the owner of the account.

Asked: "What about that other gentleman?" Mr Field-Corbett replied: "Craig Carter was a stockbroker, I do not know."

Asked if Mr Furze might have owned the account, Mr Field-Corbett said "possibly".

Judge O'Leary asked why the Cayman banker would be using the Republic to buy and sell shares in Australia. "That wouldn't make any sense."

Mr Field-Corbett said he did not know. He added his involvement with the account increased following Mr Traynor's death.

According to the transcript, Mr Field-Corbett was involved in faxing weekly statements on the account to Australia from February 1990 up to 1996.

He said the only people he discussed the matter with were Mr Traynor, Mr Furze "and the two Australians". Mr Field-Corbett said he was paid a few hundred Australian dollars per month for his work.

A document in the inspectors' report shows the Moriarty Tribunal was told by Guinness & Mahon that the account, coded A/A26, "was in Australian dollars and large sums of money moved through this account from the 1980s". The code is that of the Diamond Trust account.

In a separate document drafted by IIB Bank in 1990, at the time Mr Traynor was moving the Ansbacher Deposits there, Mr Traynor is recorded as advising the bank that one of the accounts he would want to open would be in Australian dollars. The average balance on the account would be Aus$1.5 million (€825,170), there would be an average of 20 transactions per month, and weekly statements would be required, the document notes. It is not known if this was the A/A26 account.

In their report, the inspectors said Mr Woss had a close connection with Mr Traynor. They said the reasons for Mr Woss being on the boards of companies associated with Mr Byrne was not known but did not appear to be connected with any ownership.

They said two payments out of the account could be identified as going to Mr Woss, including one to a travel company seemingly in connection with Mr Woss travelling to Corfu. These payments, coupled with the fact that the reports sent by Mr Field-Corbett went to Mr Woss, led the inspectors to conclude that Mr Woss was a client of Ansbacher.