Murphys ordered to give bank details

The Flood tribunal has threatened High Court proceedings against Mr Joseph Murphy snr, Mr Joseph Murphy jnr and senior executives in their company if they fail to produce details of their Irish bank accounts within a week.

The tribunal wrote last March to lawyers for the Murphys and four company executives seeking details of all Irish and overseas accounts they have held since 1985, as well as a letter of authorisation to approach their financial institutions for records and statements.

Mr Murphy snr and Mr Murphy jnr and the financial controller, Mr Roger Copsey, have indicated they will not comply with the order. Three executives - Mr Frank Reynolds, Mr John Maher and Mr Tim O'Keeffe - have complied or are about to.

Yesterday's hearing, the last before a 3 1/2-week break caused by the local and European elections, focused entirely on a long-running dispute over the discovery of documents from the Murphy group.

Mr Dan Herbert SC, for the Murphys, told the tribunal his clients were not prepared to make details of their accounts available, in particular "extraterrestrial" accounts. His understanding was that Mr Murphy snr (who lives in tax exile in Guernsey) has no bank accounts in Ireland or England.

The issue of bank accounts was currently before the High Court in the case brought against the tribunal by the Fianna Fail TD, Mr Liam Lawlor, he pointed out.

Mr Justice Flood said that every citizen was entitled to go to the High Court, but until a decision was made there, he had no reason to stop his work.

When Mr Herbert said that as an accountant, Mr Copsey held bank accounts in trust for other people, the chairman responded that these accounts had no relevance to the tribunal.

Questioning the right of the tribunal to make orders of discovery against the company, Mr Herbert said that Murphys was acting out of a spirit of voluntary co-operation.

Ms Patricia Dillon, for the tribunal, said there were three categories of order the Murphys had failed to comply with. The first was made by the chairman in January and February 1998 and related to documents of the various Murphy companies. The order covered documents such as financial records, bank accounts, payments to politicians, communications with politicians and documents relating to the Murphy lands in north Dublin.

The tribunal's problem here is not that Murphys have failed to submit documents. Mr Herbert said he provided the tribunal with 22 crate-loads of "dirty, musty" files.

However, Ms Dillon said the process was a "shambles" because Murphys had not indexed the thousands of files or indicated which areas the documents referred to.

Problems could arise at next month's public hearings because of the inadequacies of the Murphy discovery, she warned. Other parties could claim that the Murphys' evidence should not be taken because they had not complied with the tribunal's order.

Mr Justice Flood made an order compelling Murphys to comply with his original order of last year. However, he put a stay on this until June 11th to give the company time to comply. Mr Herbert has agreed to re-submit the documents by this time with an affidavit of discovery identifying the different types of document. The chairman said he would go to the High Court if substantial progress were not made by the agreed date.

The second category covered documents relating to the lands owned by two Murphy subsidiary companies at Forest Road, Swords, and the third relates to an order made last March for the production of the personal bank and financial accounts from six people at Murphys.