Yesterday, the Moriarty tribunal heard that six cheques which Dr Michael Dargan placed with Guinness & Mahon bank between January and March 1985 ended up in an account controlled by the late Mr Des Traynor. One of the cheques, for £10,000, was transferred to an account in the name of Celtic Helicopters.
The account into which the cheques were lodged was in the name of Amiens Securities. This company was controlled by Mr Traynor and money from its accounts was used for the benefit of Mr Charles Haughey. Dr Dargan (80), said he never gave instructions to Mr Traynor to lodge the money to Amiens Securities or to give £10,000 to Celtic Helicopters. "I have never made a contribution to, or an investment in, Celtic Helicopters, nor to Mr Haughey's affairs, nor was I ever asked, nor was I ever encouraged," he said.
Given the amount involved, Dr Dargan said he was sure the £10,000 was received by his son, to whom he presumed he was sending it as part of their joint blood-stock dealings. If it had gone missing, he would have noticed. In response to Mr John Coughlan SC, counsel for the tribunal, he said that if he had not meant the money to go to Celtic Helicopters, which he denied he had, and if it had not gone missing permanently, then it must have been temporarily misdirected.
Little evidence was heard about the other five cheques which went into the Amiens account, though sources have indicated the total amount involved, including the £10,000 which went to Celtic Helicopters, was in the region of £50,000. Dr Dargan said the cheques related to blood-stock dealings and pointed out that such earnings are free of tax.
Dr Dargan, a successful businessman who has served on a number of boards, is currently on the board of Goffs Blood-stock Sales Ltd. He had a substantial stud farm and residence in north Co Dublin. As well as being a director of the Bank of Ireland, Dr Dargan is also a former chairman and chief executive of Aer Lingus, a chairman of Cement Roadstone, and a director of Fitzwilton. He served on the boards of Aer Lingus and Cement Roadstone with the late Mr Traynor and yesterday he said he knew Mr Traynor "very well". He was a governor of the Bank of Ireland for 13 years, from the mid-1970s.
Dr Dargan said he used the Guinness & Mahon bank when sending funds abroad or receiving funds from abroad, and presumed that this was what he was doing with the £10,000 cheque when it ended up with Celtic Helicopters. He did not have an account with the bank. He said that at some stage he opened an account with Ansbacher (Cayman), the former Guinness & Mahon subsidiary on the Cayman Islands, which lodged the Ansbacher deposits with the Dublin bank.
He said all his dealings with the Ansbacher account were carried out through Mr Traynor or his office, and that he considered the Guinness & Mahon bank and the Cayman bank as one and the same. Mr Traynor is a former joint managing director of Guinness & Mahon.
Although he had an account with Ansbacher (Cayman), he did not have money deposited in the account, he said. The account was used for transmitting money abroad and receiving money from abroad. He said he never received statements.
Mr Coughlan pointed out that between 1979 and 1992 there were exchange control regulations in place governing the transfer of funds out of the State. Permission would have been needed to transfer money abroad, he said to Dr Dargan, to which the witness replied that the monies concerned were from him to his son and probably belonged to his son.
It was put to him that the account was an offshore account, to which Dr Dargan said: "If it was offshore, it was offshore". Later, Mr Paul Gallagher SC, for Guinness & Mahon, put it to him that as a director of the Bank of Ireland, he must have been aware of the exchange control requirements. Dr Dargan said: "I wouldn't have seen it as necessary if I were sending my son's funds to him abroad that I got exchange control regulation." Mr Gallagher said that he would have needed permission. Dr Dargan said: "If I did, I was doing it every month."