ANALYSIS:The Mahon tribunal has raised questions about a series of transactions and lodgements
IN HIS controversial interview with RTÉ's Bryan Dobson in 2006, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern gave the impression that friends collected money for him in 1993 and 1994 because they knew of his straitened circumstances.
However, the evidence heard at the Mahon tribunal since then indicates he had very significant amounts of money available to him in those years.
More recent evidence heard at the tribunal, concerning transactions and lodgements that may or may not be linked to Ahern's Dublin Central constituency operation, have added significantly to the amounts being examined.
The total involved in the transactions and lodgements about which the tribunal has to date raised questions is now more than £452,800. The period involved is from 1988 to 1997. The total is the equivalent of €886,830 in today's money, using consumer price index multiples for the period 1994 to 2008.
Ahern has said that some of the lodgements (totalling £70,000) constitute the relodgement of money that had been withdrawn at an earlier date, but he has as yet been unable to produce any evidence to back up these statements. Likewise, he has said lodgements totalling £54,000 arose from accumulated cash savings, but no independent evidence exists to support this.
The tribunal's inquiries into Ahern's personal finances have raised questions about the following accounts and lodgements:
BANK ACCOUNTS
The CODR Account
This account was opened on June 6th, 1989, with a lodgement of £22,955.13. Ahern is a member of the Cumann O'Donovan Rossa but the tribunal has queried whether the account, despite its initials, had anything to do with the cumann. (The cumann has about 20 members.) When the account was set up the address given was Ahern's office above Fagan's pub on Drumcondra Road, and not the cumann's then offices on Amiens Street. There is no documentation available that shows a link with the cumann.
In the seven months to July 1988, about £50,000 went into the account, and withdrawals totalling £44,000 were made, for reasons that have not been explained. The lodgements to the account included three annual cheque payments of £5,000 each, between 1990 and 1992, made by an individual who has not been identified.
The evidence indicates the account has had no transactions across it since 1995, when the Rainbow Coalition introduced new legislation governing the banking of political donations. The account still exists though who controls it is not known. Nor is the balance on it known.
St Luke's
Ahern's constituency centre was purchased for £56,000 in May 1988. Where the money came from is not known. In the course of his evidence earlier this year, Ahern said the building is now worth approximately €1.5 million.
The Bertie Ahern and Joe Burke Dublin Central account
This account was opened with AIB Drumcondra at the outset of the 1989 general election campaign. The address on the account was care of the branch.
The opening lodgement was £5,000. Within a short period, the balance on the account was £24,000 and by the end of the election the balance was £17,000. In January 1990, more than £12,000 was transferred to the CODR account. The account was still in existence in 1995. What happened to it since is not known.
The B/T account
Bertie Ahern has denied that the name on this account stands for Bertie and Tim. So too has Tim Collins, the man who opened the account with the Irish Permanent Building Society, Drumcondra, in 1989 and stipulated that the address was care of the branch.
Collins, who has never been a member of Fianna Fáil, was secretary of finance committees associated with Ahern's 1989 and 1992 general election campaigns. He did not report to any elected official of Ahern's cumann or of the Fianna Fáil Dublin Central organisation about the account. He said surplus political donations were put into the account.
The letters B/T, he said, stood for building trust. No trust by that name exists. The members of the trust, Collins said, were: himself; the late Gerry Brennan; the late Paddy Reilly; the late James Keane; and Joe Burke. This is a slightly different list of persons to the list of persons the tribunal has been told are the trustees of St Luke's.
Collins has agreed that he operated a business account with another Ahern associate, the former Fianna Fáil fundraiser Des Richardson, on which the initials D/T regularly appeared on lodgement slips. The initials he agreed stood for Des and Tim.
A former branch manager at the Irish Permanent in Drumcondra, Blair Hughes, has said his belief at the time was that the initials on the B/T account stood for "Bertie and Tim".
The account still exists and has not had a transaction across it since 1995. The current balance is in excess of €47,000. Withdrawals totalling £61,000 were made in the period up to 1995, including £30,000 given towards the purchase of a house by Ahern's then partner, Celia Larkin, in 1993, and £20,000 withdrawn in cash in 1994.
Larkin paid €49,000 to the Dublin Central organisation in January, which the tribunal has been told was the repayment of the £30,000 with interest. The amount has yet to be lodged to the B/T account. The tribunal has been told the £30,000 given to Larkin was a loan, though there is no documentation available to support this.
Hughes has told the tribunal that branch records show that a lodgement to the B/T account of £20,000 in October 1994 arose from the conversion of sterling. Prior to Hughes's evidence, Ahern had said the money arose from the relodgement of the £20,000 withdrawn in 1994. At the time the Irish pound and sterling were at parity.
The tribunal has been told lodgements of £19,000 in 1992, and £10,000 in 1995, were the proceeds of golf classics, but the tribunal has found Dublin Central documentation stating that its "inaugural" golf classic took place in 1997, after Ahern became Taoiseach.
The B/T account was not disclosed to the tribunal by either Ahern or Collins, but was discovered by the tribunal.
The 1992 Tim Collins Fianna Fáil election account
This account with AIB Drumcondra was opened by Collins on November 13th, 1992, at the outset of the general election campaign. On the same day another Fianna Fáil election account, this one with the name of one of the constituency treasurers on it, was also opened in the same branch. Collins had no explanation to offer for this fact. By December, the Collins account had almost £30,000 in it, while the second election account was overdrawn by £1,572. "I can't explain that," said Collins when the contrasting balances were pointed out to him. It is not known what happened to the money.
Bertie Ahern's Special Savings Account with AIB O'Connell Street, Dublin
This account was opened on December 30th, 1993, with £22,500 which Ahern has said was the proceeds of a "dig-out" organised by Richardson and Brennan to help Ahern pay costs arising from his separation agreement a month earlier with his wife Miriam. Brennan acted for Ahern in the separation and knew that the costs involved, which included legal costs, were £19,115.
A further lodgement of £27,164 was made to this account on April 24th, 1994. On the same day a smaller amount was lodged to Ahern's current account at the same branch, with the total lodged on the day being £30,000 cash. Ahern has said the money came from his cash savings.
Bertie Ahern account with the Irish Permanent Building Society, Drumcondra
This account was opened in January 1994. The opening lodgement of £2,500 came from a £5,000 cheque from an unidentified source.
Ahern described it as "a political donation for my personal use" when asked about it. He did not declare the payment to the Revenue at the time he banked the cheque, even though he was minister for finance.
He has since declared the sum to the Revenue.
Ahern has said a 1995 cheque lodgement of £5,000 to the account came from his father's estate but that he cannot prove this.
In correspondence with the Revenue, he has stated he believes the amount was another "political donation".
Ahern told the tribunal in evidence that most of the lodgements to the account arose from his salary.
The tribunal has since found archival documents from the Irish Permanent showing three lodgements in 1994 that were preceded by the conversion of sterling cash.
The total was £11,500 sterling, with a further £4,000 sterling going into accounts in the same branch belonging to his daughters. The branch manager at the time, Hughes, has said he believed at the time that Ahern's then secretary, Gráinne Carruth, was making sterling lodgements to "the Ahern accounts".
Carruth accepts that the documents show she did, but has said she cannot recall doing so.
The total lodged to the account up to 1997 was in excess of £38,000. There are no records to support Ahern's evidence that most of the money came from his salary. The money was put towards the purchase of his current home in 1997.
Cecelia and Georgina Ahern account AIB O'Connell Street
Ahern has said £20,000 lodged to this account in August 1994 came from cash savings totalling £54,000 accumulated over the period 1987 to 1993.
Bertie Ahern deposit account, AIB O'Connell Street
This account was opened with a lodgement of £24,838.94 on October 11th, 1994.
The tribunal has said the amount equates to exactly £25,000 sterling and that the branch took in an unusual amount of sterling on that date. Ahern has said the money was the proceeds of a second dig-out, by a second group of friends, as well as a sum of sterling given to him at a dinner in Manchester.
He has said the sum lodged was not £25,000 sterling.
A further sum of £19,142.92 was lodged in December 1995, probably by Ahern.
It is the Irish pound equivalent of sterling £20,000 and Ahern has said it was the remainder of sterling cash he bought in or around January 1995.
Celia Larkin account with AIB O'Connell Street
An opening lodgement of £28,772.90 was made to this account on December 5th, 1994. Celia Larkin has said it was money in a briefcase given to her by Ahern which she didn't look at prior to lodging it.
Ahern has said the money was mostly sterling, given to him by Manchester businessman Michael Wall.
The amount lodged equates to $45,000 exactly using one of the bank's exchange rates on the day.
The branch records show it took in sterling worth Ir£1,921.55 on the day in question.
It took in an unusually large amount of non-sterling foreign currency, enough to accommodate $45,000. Ahern has said the money lodged was not dollars.
Celia Larkin account with AIB O'Connell Street
A lodgement of £11,743.74 was made to this account when it was opened in June 1995. The lodgement included Ir£2,000, and the proceeds of the exchange of £10,000 sterling cash.
The money was to be used to furnish a house Ahern was renting from Wall.
It was only when sterling was raised with him in the course of a private interview with the tribunal in April 2007, that Ahern said he had given sterling cash to Larkin to make this lodgement, and that the sterling came from £50,000 he'd withdrawn from AIB in January 1995, and used in part to purchase £30,000 in sterling cash. No record of this purchase of sterling has ever been found.
A further sum of £9,655 was lodged in July 1995. Ahern has said it was cash he gave Larkin, and that it came from the £50,000 withdrawn in January.