The manager of Charles Haughey's secret offshore millions was the man chosen by Celtic Helicopters to raise funds for it when it was in difficulty. Des Traynor had rounded up at least some of the initial investors in the company in 1985. Now it was 1992 and the company had overspent considerably on a new hangar.
Celtic Helicopters needed a large injection of cash and Mr Traynor's remarkable expertise in raising cash was called upon once again. The co-founder of the company, John Barnacle, had told Mr Traynor they wanted £600,000. This was more than the company needed at the time, he told the tribunal, but if raised it would have put it on a sound financial footing.
Mr Traynor managed to raise £290,329 from five individuals. These were John Byrne (£47,532); Xavier McAuliffe (£50,000); the late Pat Butler of Butler Engineering, Portarlington (£25,000); Guy Snowden (£67,000). Michael Murphy, an insurance broker from Trinity Street, Dublin, was involved in the investment of £100,000.
The investment of these five was entrusted to a company called Mars Nominees Ltd. This shareholding in Celtic Helicopters was later transferred to another company, MS Nominees Ltd.
Mr Traynor had been involved in securing finance for Celtic Helicopters when it was founded in 1985. The initial investors included Joe Malone, P.V. Doyle, Seamus Purcell and Cruse W. Moss. These four, and the five who invested in 1992, have all received benefits from decisions taken while Mr Haughey was Taoiseach.
Pat Butler's (invested £25,000) company, Butler Engineering, benefited from the controversial passports for sale scheme. One of Saudi Arabia's wealthiest men, Sheikh Khalid Bin Mahfouz, put substantial funds into the troubled company after receiving Irish passports for himself and 10 others. Official documents say these passports were handed over personally to the Sheikh by the then Taoiseach, Charles Haughey.
Mr Butler's company had also been contracted to provide steel for new hangars for Celtic Helicopters.
John Byrne (invested £47,532) has been a long-time associate of Mr Haughey. He has been a major property developer for some 40 years. O'Connell Bridge House - the building which until recently had the Harp bar as its street-level tenant - is perhaps his most visible landmark development.
It, along with many other of his office developments, is leased to the State. Somewhat unusually for a developer, he has retained ownership of many of his office buildings through the Carlisle Trust, and over the years has found State tenants for most of them.
Carlisle Trust's parent company, Guinness & Mahon Cayman Trust, has its headquarters in the Cayman Islands. For many years Mr Traynor - Mr Haughey's financial organiser and the man who raised the funds for Celtic Helicopters - was on the board of both Carlisle Trust and its sister company, Dublin City Estates.
Mr Byrne is a part-owner of the Brandon Hotel in Tralee and benefited in 1988 when urban renewal designation was granted to a site centred on the hotel. Tralee Urban District Council had recommended giving such designation to the site of the old Mart in the town, but this second site was unexpectedly added to the designation.
Urban renewal designation gave attractive tax incentives to development on designated sites. Subsequently the Brandon Hotel developed a major conference facility on the site.
Mr Byrne benefited in a similar way in 1990 when Dublin's Liffey Quays designated area was extended to George's Quay. The new boundary included the site of the Tara Street baths, which he had owned since the early 1970s. An office development, Ashford House, has been built on the site since the designation.
When these two decisions were made - in both 1988 and 1990 - Charles Haughey was Taoiseach and Padraig Flynn was Minister for the Environment and had the prime responsibility for designating areas for tax incentives.
In the early 1980s Mr Byrne was involved with the Endcamp scheme to develop over 2,000 houses near Baldoyle. The plan, which was unsuccessful, involved a major sewerage scheme which would have opened up the north fringe of the city for development. The area opened up would have included Mr Haughey's land at Kinsealy.
Planning permission was refused by An Bord Pleanala after it was reconstituted in 1984 following the dismissal of Fianna Fail appointees who had been put there by Ray Burke.
Guy Snowden's (invested £67,000) company, G-Tech, was awarded the contract in October 1987 to install and operate the on-line system for the Lotto. The multimillion-pound contract was renewed in 1993, just months after his decision to invest £67,000 in Celtic Helicopters.
Last year a British jury decided that Mr Snowden had tried to bribe businessman Mr Richard Branson to withdraw his rival bid for running Britain's national lottery. G-Tech was also accused of improper lobbying and giving gifts in relation to the Texas lottery in 1997.
Michael Murphy has been a longtime associate and insurance broker to Larry Goodman, Des O'Malley told the Dail this week. He helped to negotiate Mr Goodman's export credit insurance cover for Iraq. "He was also insurance broker to the Department of Agriculture until they sued him last December in respect of the huge losses they sustained in a major fire at a beef intervention store in Ballaghaderreen in 1992," said Mr O'Malley.
At the time he was raising money for Celtic Helicopters, he was getting enormous business as a result of the State's decision to extend massive export credit insurance cover to Mr Goodman's beef exports to Iraq.
The manner of Mr Murphy's investment was complex. The cheque Mr Ciaran Haughey understood to represent Mr Murphy's investment was drawn on Carlisle Trust, Mr John Byrne's company. Shortly before that cheque was written, three Dunnes Stores cheques to the value of £180,000 were deposited in the Carlisle Trust account. The £100,000 cheque for Celtic Helicopters was written almost immediately afterwards, and subsequently a further cheque made out to cash to the value of £80,000 was drawn on the Carlisle Trust account. Mr Murphy told the Moriarty Tribunal this week that the investment was on behalf of a business colleague, Mr David Gresty of DB Agencies in Monaco. Yesterday's evidence at the tribunal indicated that this money was ultimately paid into the Ansbacher deposits into an account for the benefit of Charles Haughey, rather than for Celtic Helicopters.
Those who took shareholdings around the time of Celtic Helicopters' foundation in 1985 also enjoyed some good fortune.
Xavier McAuliffe (invested £50,000) was a minor beneficiary from Sheikh Mahfouz's investment decisions. Some of the money invested by the Sheikh in return for the passports went to Kerry Airport, in which Mr McAuliffe had a shareholding. Mr McAuliffe said this week, that this shareholding was "very small".
Mr Haughey also gave enthusiastic support to Mr McAuliffe's plan to build a marina beside the Skellig Hotel, which he owned. This project was promoted throughout 1991 and into 1992 in the face of strong local opposition. Mr Haughey's government gave it approval, although the plan was ultimately dropped.
Mr Haughey and Mr McAuliffe were well acquainted socially. When Mr Haughey was travelling over the years from Dublin to his island home on Innishvickillane, he would often land in the grounds of Mr McAuliffe's Hotel.
Joe Malone was appointed to the board of Bord Failte in November 1982, just before Mr Haughey's government was replaced by a Fine Gael/Labour coalition. Mr Malone had been director general of Bord Failte from 1976 to 1982 and had immense experience in the area, having headed up the ord's board's north American division from 1967 to 1976.
He invested £15,000 in Celtic after an invitation from Charles Haughey to do so. He put the shares in the name of his son, Joe Malone jnr, who was a friend of Ciaran Haughey. In 1984 he declined an invitation from Charles Haughey to become chairman of the company.
Mr Malone worked for General Automotive Corporation from 1983 to 1988, becoming executive-president and president of GAC International. GAC obtained a major contract to supply buses to CIE (see below under Cruse W. Moss) The builder turned hotelier, the late P.V. Doyle, was a board member of Bord Failte from 1970 until his death in 1988, and was therefore reappointed by several governments, including one headed by Mr Haughey.
Dr John O'Connell, who invested £5,000 in Celtic Helicopters after a request from Mr Haughey, was appointed to the Seanad by the Taoiseach after he lost his Dail seat in 1987.
In the late 1970s Mr Haughey travelled to Iraq and in 1983 he travelled to Libya, where he met the Libyan leader Col Gadafy. On at least one of these occasions he set up an "oil for beef" arrangement whereby Ireland would export beef in exchange for importing oil. Mr Seamus Purcell, who, with his brother, operated a major livestock exporting business based in Co Tipperary and operating out of Waterford port, was a beneficiary of this arrangement.
Mr Cruse W. Moss took out a shareholding in Celtic Helicopters in June 1985. General Automotive Corp - of which he was chairman - benefited from a major contract with CIE. General Automotive and the bus-building company Bombardier set up a joint venture in Shannon in the early 1980s and built and sold buses to CIE. General Automotive ultimately took over the entire project. The company ceased operations in Ireland in the late 1980s. It is estimated that CIE spent over £50 million on Bombardier buses, even though they cost more than buses built elsewhere. The decision to keep buying the Bombardier buses was taken in order to support Irish employment, a company source has suggested. The buses had a reputation for unreliability and all are now being replaced.
