A family trust set up by the builder Mr Thomas Brennan in Jersey appeared to have made payments for purposes other than trust purposes, the Flood tribunal heard yesterday.
The tribunal is investigating payments to the former Fianna Fail minister, Mr Ray Burke, from companies linked to Brennan and McGowan builders.
Mr Patrick Hanratty SC, for the tribunal, pointed to a number of transfers from the family trust, Beachside Holdings, to other accounts and firms.
"Is it conceivable that Beachside Holdings Ltd would have been making payments of some small, some large sums of money for purposes other than trust purposes?" he asked Mr Simon Howard, of Bedell & Cristin, the Jersey law firm that handled Brennan and McGowan's offshore companies.
"Yes, certainly, looking at records that we've got available of transactions which Beachside was involved in, to my eye it appears that Beachside was something more than a pure investment holding vehicle," Mr Howard said.
"Here we've got a company that was involved in a lot of quite significant financial transactions, some of which directly appear to be directly related to business transactions."
What would be the advantage of such a trust? asked Mr Hanratty. Mr Howard said he did not really know but there may have been a tax advantage.
"From 1982 there were a series of payments which in my view changed in character," he said. At first, more of the payments related to property, but later they related to interests in horse-racing and bloodstock.
In May 1991, £30,000 was transferred from Beachside to Westpark Securities in the Isle of Man. This was followed by transfers of £70,000 and more than £18,000. Mr Howard said it appeared that the three transfers were related to bloodstock.
On July 20th, 1992, £20,000 was transferred from Beachside to Steeplestone Bloodstock Ltd in the Isle of Man.
"A total of £340,000 from February 1994 to April 1997 was transferred to various accounts in the Isle of Man from Beachside to Silkborg," Mr Hanratty told the tribunal.
Mr Howard said he had no information as to why the payments went to the Isle of Man. They had tried to contact Silkborg but no one answered the phone or responded to faxes.
The tribunal also heard that £215,000 went from Beachside and other accounts controlled by Brennan and McGowan to an account in Liechtenstein in a short space of time.
In May 1985, £20,000 was withdrawn from Beachside Holdings Ltd and lodged in a bank in Liechtenstein. "This £20,000 was the first of a series of transfers from Beachside to Liechtenstein," Mr Hanratty said.
Mr Howard said he was not familiar with the Liechtenstein bank. "It was certainly not an institution that we had regular dealings with," he said.