Lawlor accused of concealing business dealings

Lawyers for the Mahon tribunal today accused former Fianna Fáil TD Mr Liam Lawlor of "putting layers upon layers" in his business affairs in order to conceal his dealings.

Mr Des O'Neill SC for the tribunal said every time the inquiry pursued Mr Lawlor's financial transactions they involved companies or offshore trusts to which it had no powers compellability.

But Mr Lawlor claimed this was "wholly untrue" and that he had endeavoured to meet the orders of discovery for documents made by the tribunal.

Mr Lawlor complained that some of the requests had involved a serious amount of documentation from companies located abroad whose primary interest did not extend to the activities planning tribunal in Dublin.

"Maybe that isn't good enough for Mr O'Neill who smugly smiles on €2,500 a day," he said.

However, Judge Mahon said the tribunal was not satisfied with the information Mr Lawlor had supplied.

To which Mr Lawlor said he would "address" anything that the tribunal was not satisfied with.

Mr Lawlor was then asked about his average monthly expenditure. He estimated he spent on average about €2,000 to €3,000 a month. He said he had spent about €15,000 since the beginning of the year.

Mr O'Neill then asked him to explain how he withdrew 164,000 deutschmarks or about (IR£60,000) between March and December of 2000 from one bank card alone.

Mr Lawlor said that at the time he had a lot of expenses relating to his business deals in the Czech Republic.

Judge Mahon asked Mr Lawlor to furnish the tribunal details of all his personal expenditure of the last six months.