The accountant who paid Mr Charles Haughey's bills employed technology worthy of a secret agent in an effort to keep the former Taoiseach's personal financial transactions hidden from public scrutiny.
Mr Jack Stakelum ensured Mr Haughey's bills were paid with cheques implanted with "almost invisible" microdots which avoided the need to print his company's name on the cheques.
Mr Stakelum told the Moriarty tribunal yesterday he feared that if the name of his company - Business Enterprises Ltd - was evident on cheques paying Mr Haughey's bills, it would attract media attention.
When he mentioned his concerns to staff at AIB, they suggested the microdot technology.
He said: "If the butcher got a cheque from Business Enterprises Ltd paying an account for Mr Haughey, and if the press got hold of it" journalists would ask why he was writing cheques for Mr Haughey's bills. The cheques were usually signed by Mr Stakelum's secretary, Ms Anne Vernon, whose signature "wouldn't mean anything to anybody". From 1991 to 1996 some £2 million passed through the account on which the cheques were drawn. A former employee of Haughey Boland, Mr Stakelum said he had taken on the bill-paying service in 1991 after the facility was moved from Deloitte and Touche because of concerns about Mr Haughey's privacy. The account was funded by transfers from foreign currency accounts controlled by Mr Des Traynor and Mr Padraig Collery.
The tribunal also heard yesterday that financier Mr Dermot Desmond gave Mr Haughey £100,000 sterling in 1994 after the former Taoiseach said he was considering becoming a director of a German bank. He also paid £25,000 sterling to Mr Haughey in October 1996.
