The auditor of Bovale Development's accounts said yesterday it appeared the company's accounts had been altered between the time he carried out his audit in 1988 and when they were presented to the Flood tribunal.
He said the accounts given to the tribunal were different from the ones his firm audited. This was why he believed his firm, in compiling an analysis of returned house deposits by the company in 1987, wrongly listed a number of political contributions as returned deposits.
Mr Joseph O'Toole said the analysis was conducted from information contained in a cheque payments journal given to his firm by Bovale Developments. He said the journal given to the tribunal listed as political contributions a number of payments which appeared in the auditor's analysis as returned house deposits.
He agreed with counsel for the tribunal, Mr Desmond O'Neill SC, this meant Bovale Developments got a tax write-off on political contributions by wrongly entering them in the accounts as returned house deposits.
Mr O'Toole, having carried out "a limited review" of the accounts overnight before his second day in the witness-box, said he also believed this was how other discrepancies appeared in the audited accounts. These included payments of £23,000 for Dublin Corporation, and three other payments totalling £41,800 listed as going to suppliers but which actually went into the company directors' accounts or were paid as wages.
"The only conclusion that I can come to is that the entries shown to us were different to the ones you have," said Mr O'Toole.
Asked by Mr O'Neill if this meant two sets of accounts were being kept, Mr O'Neill said he didn't know but there seemed to be differences in the records.
Mr O'Toole was also asked about discrepancies he found in a returned-paid cheques audit test and whom he queried these with. He said Mr Tom Bailey would have clarified issues and pointed out that some cheques were wrongly entered in the cheque payments book.
On one day £44,000 was wrongly entered by the company in its cheque payments book. The money had been lodged to the account of Mr Tom and Ms Caroline Bailey.
"Were you surprised the money was in the account of the directors?" Mr O'Neill asked. Mr O'Toole replied: "I was surprised actually, yes".
Counsel also asked Mr O'Toole if he had checked back to see if other payments attributed in the cheque payments journal to Dublin Corporation had in fact gone to the corporation. The auditor said he did not go back over other years.