At the request of tribunals, the practice of destroying bank records after 10 years was stopped, the Moriarty tribunal was told yesterday.
Mr Walter Maguire, district operations manager of the Bank of Ireland, College Green, Dublin, said, however, that almost all records in the vaults had had to be destroyed in 1994-1995 because of asbestos contamination.
He was giving evidence about the possible source of two lodgments from the bank to an account of Amiens Securities Ltd, an account controlled by Mr Des Traynor, in Guinness & Mahon.
Ms Jacqueline O'Brien, counsel for the tribunal, asked about two lodgments, one on February 22nd, 1988, of £195,000 and the other of February 24th, 1988, of £49,700.
She said that in his statement Mr Maguire said almost all records in the bank's vaults had to be destroyed because of asbestos contamination between December 1994 and June 1995.
In the ordinary course what would the retention period be for the underlying records for this account? Mr Maguire replied: "The maximum 10 years."
Ms O'Brien said that in the ordinary course they would have been destroyed in 1998 but were destroyed in 1994-1995. Unfortunately, the paper records in the bank's processing centre did not go back as far as these transactions.
"Unfortunately our film records, and I've checked this twice with two different people so that there's no mistake, go back as far as July 1988," Mr Maguire said. "We don't have anything else prior to that. Again they were on a 10-year destruction cycle and that was stopped, I think, at the request of tribunals."
Ms O'Brien said Guinness & Mahon documents appeared to show that the source of each of these credit entries was a transfer of funds from the Bank of Ireland. The credit of £195,000 was found on a Guinness & Mahon No 1 account statement. This was described as a lodgment.
Mr Maguire said being described as a lodgment would indicate that it was a lodgment of paper, of cheques or drafts.
"As it turns out we don't have records of what was in this particular lodgment simply because the records don't exist," he said.