A whistle-blowing note which came into the hands of the Revenue Commissioners was carefully scrutinised by the Dail Committee of Public Accounts yesterday.
The somewhat cryptic note asserted that tax evasion involving customers of National Irish Bank was "allegedly known by staff" at NIB, and that up to 180 customers were involved.
"Funds moved offshore to prevent identification of the taxpayer concerned," it said. "All done in one day, some time in the late Eighties. Moved to Clerical Medical International 10 per cent. Portfolios managed by them on behalf of taxpayers, monitored by NIB. Funds moved back to NIB head office at Wilton Terrace (Dublin), 1994. Example of CMI also available."
There was an accompanying warning that the note should not be used as it might expose the identity of the informant.
"Can you help us at all about the paternity of that note?" Mr Pat Rabbitte asked the bank's chief executive, Mr Don Price. "No, Deputy," he replied.
Neither did anyone else on the NIB side of the table appear to know anything about the note.
Finally Mr Padraig O Donghaile, a chief inspector of the Revenue Commissioners, volunteered that he knew about the note: he had received a phone call on January 14th, 1998, and it was followed by "a fax to me of the documentation referred to on the bottom line". It informed the basis of his subsequent inquiries to NIB, he said.
In reply to Mr Rabbitte he confirmed that he had not apprised NIB of his being in possession of the note. It was confidential information and he needed to protect the informant's identity.
"Our procedures, generally, are that where we get information from informants we don't tend to expose that fact to the person to whom we're corresponding or discussing the issue with."
He would have been discreet.
As to what the bank's response was to his probing on the basis of the allegations, Mr O Donghaile said NIB suggested that there were systems in place "to ensure these kind of things didn't happen". But it had raised issues concerning CMI, he added, that were of particular interest.
"What is your opinion in terms of the attempt to ring-fence CMI from the whole DIRT issue?" Mr Rabbitte asked. What apparently had happened, said Mr O Donghaile, was that money was moved offshore as investors invested in an international entity.
Much of these funds had come back to NIB and remained on deposit in Ireland. "The question then arises as to whether or not NIB dealt with the subsequent requirements of the DIRT legislation in relation to that - whether they dealt with them properly - and this would be the issue of whether or not the Clerical Medical International provided the appropriate declarations."
The Revenue's inquiries in this area had yet to be completed.
In response to Mr Rabbitte the NIB chief, Mr Price, conceded that the note was "disturbing". It was the first time he had seen it. He was somewhat confused, he said, about the timing referred to, the late 1980s, since the CMI scheme was not launched before 1991. "The CMI personal portfolio was a standard product produced by the CMI group. It was not designed for tax evasion."
The suggestion was, said Mr Rabbitte, that there were 170 to 180 customers involved in those years. He asked whether the bank could examine its records to see whether there was any basis for the allegations.
Mr Price undertook to do so. But NIB's project director, Mr John Trethowan, intervened to say he did not believe that at any time 170 to 180 accounts would have moved on any one day.
The committee resolved to ask the bank for its assistance in clarifying the matter.