Mr Joseph Murphy senior strongly rejected as a complete lie allegations in an affidavit that he breached various exchange regulations and said he never evaded tax anywhere when he gave evidence in Guernsey earlier this month.
The allegations made by former chief executive of the Murphy group Mr Liam Conroy, now deceased, in litigation in the Isle of Man in 1989, were later withdrawn in a settlement agreement in May 1990.
Five days of Mr Murphy's evidence to the tribunal, which he gave in private in Guernsey over 11 days, were yesterday read into the record. In Guernsey, Mr Murphy was asked about dissension that built up between himself and Mr Conroy. When asked about meetings in 1988 in which new directors of JMSE were appointed, including Mr Murphy and members of his family, he said: "Excuse me, what's all this got to do with Burke allegedly getting some money?"
Mr Desmond O'Neill SC, for the tribunal, said he was being asked these questions to establish what his interest and control of the lands were and how they were managed.
Mr O'Neill said as a result of a number of meetings, Mr Conroy finally left the group. Later, Mr Conroy and the Murphy Group were in legal dispute in the Isle of Man and Mr Conroy swore an affidavit in which he made the allegations.
Mr O'Neill said Mr Conroy had alleged Mr Murphy breached various exchange control regulations by exporting money without any authorisation.
Mr Murphy said: "That's not true. I never exported any money from anywhere . . . No truth in the world in that. I never breached any laws of control or anything else," Mr Murphy stated.
Mr O'Neill said the affidavit alleged that Mr Murphy wanted secrecy in his affairs and that the reason for this was Mr Murphy's potential tax problems. Mr Murphy allegedly informed Mr Conroy that he had evaded UK tax and exchange controls in the early 1970s and had deposited large sums of money in Switzerland in the name of two Liberian registered companies. Mr Conroy also alleged that Mr Murphy also evaded Guernsey tax by having bank accounts in Ireland and by UK accommodation addresses.
"Well I never evaded a tax anywhere and I've always paid my tax in any place I have been. I've never been in trouble with any tax authority because I had paid what was appropriate to that place I lived. Exporting money, that's a complete lie, no truth at all in that. "He (Mr Conroy) suffered from imagination, that fella. He imagined things to happen. He imagined that he was taking a plane-load of money one time from Saudi Arabia, he was a pilot, to Switzerland, a plane-load of dollars. He had all that sort of fantasy about huge sums of money that he was carting from one part of the world to the other which was all lies. He had a 200ft yacht down in South America which he sailed every three months and he had a brother who was building a lot of skyscrapers in New York.
"He had a $100 million worth of machinery ruined one year by an early frost that damaged the machines. This man was totally bananas with his tales," Mr Murphy said.
Mr O'Neill asked about the two companies in Switzerland. Did he know anything about that? Mr Murphy said he did not.
Mr Murphy said Mr Conroy made up the allegations in the affidavit to destroy him. That was his intention.
He had met him later in a pub in London and Mr Conroy had told him that he did it for the purpose of doing as much harm to him as he could.
Mr O'Neill asked him about the lands owned by the Murphy Group in north Co Dublin, particularly about the Forest Road site. Mr Murphy said that Mr James Gogarty was the man in charge of the lot as far as he was concerned.
Mr O'Neill suggested that the initiative to sell the lands came from Mr Murphy and not Mr Gogarty. Mr Murphy said that was not true. Mr Gogarty kept haunting him for months to sell the lands and said they were agricultural.
"I depended on Gogarty's honesty to give me the truth and I feared that these lands would always remain agricultural land at so much an acre . . . I had 100 per cent reliance on him that he gave me the true position there," Mr Murphy said.