The basic list of 120 Ansbacher account holders is only the tip of the iceberg, the chairman of the Revenue Commissioners, Mr Dermot Quigley told the Dail Committee of Public Accounts yesterday. He said there could be as many as 400 assorted entities and trusts involved. "There are other people involved in offshore accounting, who are coming under Revenue scrutiny," he said. "Far from reducing the number of names being looked at, it's increasing very rapidly: names of individuals, companies coming into our ken as a result of our inquiries.
"We will succeed in tracing a very significant number of these cases. Certainly people will be less relaxed about not giving us information because we will piece together a story in relation to these cases and I won't hesitate to go to the High Court and require a person to provide the information to us," he warned.
Mr Quigley told Mr Conor Lenihan TD that there was a core team of 10 auditors and a back-up team of 20 working on the accounts. So far, £8 million (#10 million) in payments had been received but a big number of new cases was emerging and extra auditors would be needed.
"I think that is essential priority work in view of the background of the last couple of years. It's the most complicated arrangement with which we have to deal. You are dealing with a whole infrastructure of arrangements - you're dealing with offshore accounts, so-called discretionary trusts.
"We've obtained so far 65,000 documents from financial institutions using our powers we got in 1999 and we are only @ part of it. We're also interviewing the people concerned, using our powers to ensure they supply information. It's an extremely demanding job. I couldn't put a time frame on it."
Mr Quigley said he was confident they were making progress and amassing very substantial amounts of information but there was a "slowness" on the part of some people to give information. On the amnesty under which bogus offshore account holders have until November 15th to make a voluntary disclosure to the Revenue, he said the number of individual depositors could be as high as 25,000 to 50,000. Later, in reply to questions, he said it could be "70,000-plus". "The scale of what was involved here was unprecedented. The level of bogusness didn't run uniformly."
He refused to give an estimate for the amount of money due. If this process is successful, and elicits a large volume of voluntary disclosures, they would then be dealing with a narrow group of people, he said.
