Burke shredded half a ton of records

Former minister, Mr Ray Burke, shredded over half-a-ton of his confidential documents several months before the tribunal was set up to examine his affairs.

However, Mr Burke told the tribunal yesterday that the material destroyed consisted only of constituency documents and did not include any bank records or other material of interest to the tribunal.

The records were shredded several days after the general election in June 1997, and two months before he made a statement to the Dβil about allegations then circulating about him. The tribunal was established in November 1997.

The tribunal yesterday produced a document showing that 549 kg of documents were destroyed.

Mr Burke explained that after each election, it was his policy to "start afresh" with his constituency files. "In the old days" he would have burned the documents, but the technology had moved on and in 1997 he had them shredded.

Ms Patricia Dillon SC, for the tribunal, said that, in 1982 Mr Burke's combined salaries were about £17,000. Yet in December that year, he received a payment of £50,000 - three times his salary - from Kalabraki, an offshore company owned by builder Mr Tom Brennan.

She pointed out that Mr Burke used an abnormal form of his name (P.D. Burke) and a false address in England in setting up an account in the Isle of Man to receive this money.

She asked why Mr Burke had elected to receive the money in this fashion. It was "highly implausible" that he would have dealt with a genuine political donation this way. She suggested he was concealing the money.

Mr Burke said it had to do with confidentiality, not concealment. As a "free citizen", he had chosen to deal with it in this "unorthodox" way. Much of the money was returned to Ireland in 1994 and placed in a political fund, which exists to this day, he said.

Ms Dillon reviewed Mr Burke's Dβil statement of August 1997 and his earlier evidence to the tribunal in 1997. These contained a number of errors, she said.

Mr Burke's assertion that £30,000 was the largest donation he received was wrong, she pointed out. He had at least two overseas bank accounts, not one. He originally said a payment of £35,000, which was lodged to his account in Jersey in 1984, was the result of fund-raising in the UK, but now says it was a re-lodgment of money withdrawn from an account in the Isle of Man.

Ms Dillon said Mr Burke failed to disclose the existence of his account in the Isle of Man and an offshore account operated by Kalabraki. The company paid him £50,000 in 1982.

Mr Burke replied to these queries by saying that whenever he got the correct details, he immediately provided the tribunal with this information.

Ms Dillon asked why Mr Burke hadn't revealed the existence of Kalabraki until June 2000. Mr Burke said that before this date he didn't have the details. As soon as he knew the name of Kalabraki, he sent it to the tribunal. It then took the tribunal six months to reply to his letter.

Mr Burke said he had given 12 separate consents for the tribunal to contact various parties in relations to his affairs.