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Ahern's web of deceit

That’s the most polite way I can put it. Piece by piece Ahern’s story of dig-outs and donations is falling apart. And it will continue to fall apart. Both of the so-called digouts no longer stand up to scrutiny. They were not friends helping out a pal in need. They were people with vested interests giving money to the Minister for Finance and later Fianna Fail leader, who later became Taoiseach.

Let’s deal with the donations that came to light in 2006.

The £22,500 digout for legal expenses, Christmas 1993

Ahern already paid his legal expenses by the time he received this cash. He took out a loan, with very soft conditions from AIB to meet the costs his solicitor friend Gerry Brennan was seeking. Brennan, for some strange reason, organised a whipround in order to pay his own fees.

But by the time the money was presented to Ahern, the bill had already been paid – and Brennan must have known this. What happened the £22,500? It went into a high interest savings account. Later, the following April, it was joined by more cash, part of Ahern’s alleged £50,000 in savings. Not alone that, but the donor of the biggest amount – £5,000 from Padraic O’Connor – was from a man who said he never intended for Ahern personally, and was never his friend. All of that through the vehicle of shady companies run by Ahern’s close friend, Des Richardson.

The £16,500 goodwill payment & the Manchester payment

I believe the Tribunal will find these were fictitious. There is no evidence whatsoever for either event. Ahern has refused to name any of the businessmen he believes were present, yet he said they were worth over £50m each. The donors of the £16,500 cash are all friends of Ahern. It is pretty clear that things did not happen as Ahern has described, even if the meetings did take place.

The crucial point with this is the sum that was lodged, £24,838.49. Ahern says this was a combination of the £16,500 (that he later changed his mind to saying it might be slightly more or less), and the circa £8,000 stg. He can’t be sure exactly how much – how convenient. But the figure, says Ahern, is incidental.

Taking into account the bank charges that AIB charge, and the exchange rate that day in the branch, the total equates exactly to a sum of £25,000 sterling. The average sterling transaction in that branch per day was £2,000. Yet, the very same day Ahern lodged his money, so was mysteriously, a massive amount of sterling. Coincidence? I think not. (Q505, Ahern)

The other lodgments make his story even less plausible. The £30,000 in April was lodged one week after the meeting with O’Callaghan. Why the need for a dig-out in December when there was an alleged £30k in savings hanging around? The August lodgment into his daughters’ accounts – £20,000. More savings? The alleged £25,000 stg lodgment in October, where did that come from? The Michael Wall lodgment, equating to $45,000. The alleged re-lodging of £50,000 in 1995, was it as he says it was?

Lots of questions, but no answers from An Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern. To use a quote from the current Minister for Environment, John Gormley “a deceitful, untrustworthy Taoiseach”. (Prime Time, September 26, 2002)

Technorati ranking

I have long since fallen behind in ranking on Technorati, especially after they reviewed the way they rank blogs, prioritising freshness of links over volume. But of late there has been a resurgence, probably because I’ve started blogging daily again.

Taint keeps a list of Irish blogs by rank, and at the moment I’m somewhere near the bottom of the top 50. Not bad at all.

Since I have been off the radar for quite a while, I wonder how would I best shout out to newer bloggers, or indeed to long time bloggers who I may need to ping to ask for a link. Perhaps if I just created a single entry with a link to everyone on planet.journals.ie?

Tribunal malaise

So I do tend to read Tribunal transcripts quite a lot. This week has been thrilling to say the least, much new detail has emerged. One thing that I ask myself now is not about whether Bertie Ahern received large sums of cash.

The question I am asking myself now is exactly how connected is Ahern to the widespread planning corruption that pervaded Dublin during the 80s and 90s. There are certainly indirect connections to Frank Dunlop, via Des Richardson and his ‘companies’. There are connections to the failed Phoenix casino plan, to dollar transactions, to an array of developments.

Massive sums of cash were making their way into the accounts of Bertie Ahern. While Ahern says they are from friends, many of them were also property developers, who directly gained from planning and Government decisions.

A good example of this is Tim Collins, one of the donors to Ahern, and a close friend and a trustee of St Luke’s, who was involved with a company, Deepriver Ltd, who bought the Battle of the Boyne site for €3.43m in 1997, and sold it to the State in 2000 for €9.4m. For his trouble, Collins made €600,000. He was warned last year by the Tribunal, because he ‘forgot’ to mention this fact.

Tim Collins was also involved with Des Richardson in Work Force Limited, the ‘company’ that facilitated the £5,000 donation from NCB stockbrokers.

Ahern has not explained these huge cash lodgements by any means. And the more the Tribunal probes, the less Ahern’s story holds water.

I love it when a plan comes together

As P O’Neill says over on Irish Election, Richardson is joining the dots. This is the first mention of US dollars being used in relation to FF donations. And as we all know by now, Ahern denies having received $45,000. Or does he?

As I have blogged before, his statement was very carefully phrased:

The lodgment on 5th December 1994 was not a dollar lodgment

There has been some speculation about this sum. The lodgment of about £28,700 on 5th December 1994 was a cash lodgment which is not exactly £30,000 sterling but rather is a lesser sum and may have been a mixture of sterling and Irish pounds. Hence it is in an irregular amount. It is not a dollar sum. I never had $45,000 either then, before then or since. There are no dollar transactions in my accounts. I do not deal nor have I ever dealt in dollars.

In addition two points need to be emphasized. Firstly, at the appropriate AIB rate for dollars on that date, a lodgment of £28,772.90 would equate not to $45,000 but to $44,277.68. Secondly, there are a number of combinations of sterling and Irish pounds that result in the amount which was lodged. The sum of $45,000 was never lodged to any account maintained by Ms. Larkin for the purpose of the house.

It is clear that Ahern is wrong on this, and he has conceded as much. But if Richardson had previously changed $10,000 US dollars into Irish, is it not possible he also changed $45,000? Would Ahern not have received the Irish total, but still allow him say he never dealt in dollars?

The mention of Norman Turner as the donor of the $10,000 is also interesting, given that Turner paid for trips by Ahern to Manchester, which cost upwards of £2,500 each. What chance that Ahern received $45,000, or the equivalent of that sum?

Brennan's whip-round

This went completely over my head it seems.

Solicitor Gerry Brennan, the man who did the whip-round for Ahern in order to pay Ahern’s legal fees, was in fact the solicitor acting for Ahern in the proceedings. So Brennan knew how much Ahern would owe in legal fees because he was the man charging Ahern the legal fees. So he suggested to Richardson that they gather some money in order to pay him. How odd.

Even stranger, Brennan handed over the money to Ahern. Which Ahern was then supposed to use to pay Brennan.

Counsel for the tribunal also makes another interesting point. Ahern characterised the £22,500 as a ‘debt of honour’. If it was a debt, why did he not pay back the estates of either Fintan Gunne or Paddy Reilly upon their deaths?

Curiously, at the time, Ahern was sole signatory on cheques that were being lodged into accounts of Willdover, through the Reynolds Ahern account. This was Fianna Fail money going to Willdover. And then Willdover money going to Ahern personally.

Indeed, just before Christmas, on December 1, 1993, the Willdover account was overdrawn to the tune of £10,346. By the 20th, the account is overdrawn to £8,572. Willdover was being paid by Fianna Fail for fundraising services.

On December 22, the day before Ahern applied for his loan, and his SSA account, Willdover received a cheque from Fianna Fail, signed by Bertie Ahern, to the tune of £18,744. This included £15,000 in fees for Richardson and £3,744 for Deborah Burke fees.

So Richardson invoiced Sean Fleming in Fianna Fail for that amount and received it the same day Richardson made a cheque out for £2,500 from this account to Ahern, as part of the £22,500 digout.

It is important to also not that Willdover Limited did not operate as a company. Richardson was not the director, it was not VAT registered, it paid no taxes, filed no returns. It was entirely an entity with no definable links to Richardson, but one that Richardson used for personal expenses, and for being paid by Fianna Fail. £382,000 passed through the bank accounts of Willdover in the time the company operated. Just like Berraway, Willdover was simply Richardson wearing a different hat.

The St Luke's deal

It is worth noting that in relation to Philip Murphy’s testimony at the Mahon Tribunal, and the loan application form filled out by him for Ahern, that some issues arise.

Ahern says on the application that he is the ‘owner’ of St Luke’s, and that it is worth, in 1995, some £90,000. This forms part of his retrospective loan application for almost £20,000, which he received on December 23rd 1993.

But in the book by Ken Whelan and Eugene Masterson it is clearly stated that St Luke’s was bought via other means, and organised by Des Richardson. Strangely, the house was bought for £57,000 in the mid-80s, and another £50,000 was spent on refurbishing the house. Yet it was only valued by Ahern at £90,000 some eight years later.

But in another apparent digout, 25 people donated £1,000 each towards the cost of buying the house. A house that Ahern called his home on the application form, his residential address for eight years. Not alone that, but donations were made in subsequent years towards the outstanding mortgage. A house that Ahern lived in up to him moving to Beresford.

Say Messrs Whelan and Masterson:

To finance the purchase, they [(former Senator Tony) Kett and Kiely] brought together 25 local well-to-do supporters who pledged £1,000 each, with further contributions over a five year period. This was sufficient to put together a mortgage for the house with the repayments paid through the constituency organisation’s own bank.

The purchase price in the mid-80’s was £57,000. The house was assigned to a group of five trustees – again, not party activists – who for legal purposes vested the property in the Dublin Central Fianna Fail organisation.

So who owns the house? Fianna Fail?

Another thing that strikes me is that Ahern calculates that his pay, the Party Leader’s Allowance (abused for so long by Haughey thanks to blank cheques from Ahern), plus his TD salary (he ceased being Minister in December 1994), amounted to £200,000. An extraordinary sum by any means.

And why say he only had £5,000 in his Permanent TSB account when the figure was closer to £33,000?

Another point arises. In his interview with Brian Dobson last year, Ahern said:

Well what he, he raised, should I say first of all they offered, eh, they came to me a month earlier, my High Court case which had been dragged out, I separated in 1987 and I had been in the High Court a number of times in 1993 and it concluded in November 1993. Em, Gerry Brennan came to me and he said that, em, they wanted to raise a function for me. Em, 1,000 a head, 25-30 people. I said no, I wasn’t going to do that, that was personal [ indistinct].

Anyone does that it’s for politics, so I refused. So then unknown to me he went to personal friends of mine, Paddy Reilly, Des Richardson, Pádraig O’Connor, Jim Nugent, David McKenna, Fintan Gunne, who is deceased, Mick Collins, Charlie Chawke, all personal friends of mine. And they gave me 22,500 either Christmas Eve or Stephen’s Day in 1993.

Dobson : That was to settle, at that stage, your legal bills?

Ahern : It was, they, they knew, a good few of them knew that I had taken out a loan with AIB in O’Connell Street to settle my legal bills. I had taken out the loan so I actually used the loan to settle the bills. Em, I didn’t want to take the money, I took it on the agreement, it was Gerry Brennan and Des Richardson, I didn’t deal with them all, they gave me the 22,500 and I said that I would deal, take this as a debt of honour, that I would repay it in full, that I would pay interest on it. I know the tax law, I’m an accountant. And, em, that I would pay that back in, in full and at another date when I could.

So Gerry Brennan went and did a whip around for money. Because Ahern was in a bad way financially. First off, one of the men mentioned, Padraig O’Connor, has since claimed that he is not a personal friend of Ahern, that he paid over the £5,000 (the bank draft made out to Des Richardson) on the understanding it was going to Ahern’s constituency operation. This money came from the firm O’Connor worked for, NCB Stockbrokers, but is thought to have totaled £6,050 and made payable to a firm called Euro Work Force, for providing health and safety consultancy.

The £2,500 was a cheque again from Richardson, via Willdover limited, one of Richardson’s companies. (Incidentally, Richardson said earlier this year that Fianna Fail was paying £5,000 a month to Willdover, for fundraising work). It should be pointed out that Ahern himself lodged this cheque into AIB on either December 23 or 30, 1993. As far back as 2002, the Sunday Business Post asked the Taoiseach directly about Willdover and the response was stark:

Detailed questions were submitted to Taoiseach Bertie Ahern concerning Richardson’s fundraising work for the party and regarding Willdover.

However, his spokesman did not provide answers and referred the questions to Fianna Fáil. She declined to say whether this decision had been made by the Taoiseach.

Aside from fundraising matters, Ahern did not respond to questions from this newspaper regarding taxation issues relating to Richardson’s work for Fianna Fáil.

The other £15,00 was cash, apparently from the other men in total. What’s at issue here is the timing. Ahern is saying he got the money after the 23rd. The tribunal is wondering why, if he knew nothing about the whip around, an SSA declaration was signed by him on December 23rd. And if it was a debt of honour, what exactly did he need the ‘loan’ for? It sat in his SSA account, and was subsequently topped up later in 1994 to the £50,000 limit. His legal bills were paid, he had a moratorium on repayments, what exactly was the problem?

Ahern's loan application form

Another day for former AIB assistant manager Philip Murphy. Certainly some curious things are coming up. Transcript here.

One thing that stands out is that when Murphy went over the review of the loan with Ahern in 1995, and an application form was finally filled out (in May 1995, 18 months after Ahern had got the money), Ahern made some rather startling claims. This includes the claim that he was the owner of St Luke’s, when it is apparently owned by a trust established by Des Richardson.

First, the conversation either took place in the O’Connell street branch, in St Lukes, or on the phone.

The form gave the following details. We have probably all filled out loan applications so you get the idea.

Name: Bertie Ahern
Address: St Luke’s, 161 Lower Drumcondra Road
Number of years at address: 8 years
Dependent children: 2, aged 14, 16
Residential status: owner blank, tenant blank, parents blank
If owner, value of house: £90,000 (referring to St Luke’s)
Employment: TD, public representative Fianna Fail
Employer’s name and address: Fianna Fail
Years in present employment: 20
Gross income: Party Leaders Allowance £200k plus TD salary
Regular monthly income after tax : expenses 20k plus 18k? (This bit is vague about what they are referring to, outgoings or incomings)
Frequency of payment: monthly
Other accounts held: Irish Permanent, balance £5k (actual balance was £32,424.23)
AIB, current account (overdraft, £21,896DR)
AIB deposit £22,384 credit
AIB current £3,010 credit
Credit cards: Visa, American Express
Other borrowings: Nil
Purpose of loan: Marriage seperation (note written by Murphy that the loan must be cleared over eight months from deposit acc)

After going through this, counsel gets stuck into Murphy. Murphy is wondering why an SSA was approved on the 23rd, but no money was handed over on that day.

He is hinting that a back-to-back loan (read money laundering) was taken out on the 23rd and that Ahern brought £15,000 in cash, a £5,000 bank draft and a £2,500 cheque into the bank on the 23rd, the same day he took out a loan for almost £20,000.

Murphy denies this, saying Ahern called him on the 30th and said he wanted to lodge “a few bob”, and that this was physically done on the 30th. Why then was the declaration for the SSA application done on the 23rd?

Anyway, on the 30th, Ahern comes into the branch. He sits across the table from Murphy. He takes £15,000 cash out of his pocket, and hands it to Murphy. That’s from someone on less than £40,000 a year. Then he handed over the draft and cheque. Murphy says he would have counted the money in front of Ahern, but can’t remember what the denominations were. He then passed the money on to a teller.

The bank draft was made payable to Des Richardson, and is signed on the back by him. Both that and the cheque are dated December 22nd. The cheque is drawn on the account of Willdover Limited, signed by Des Richardson.

Apparenty, Murphy believes he went to school with Richardson, but not in the same class, and knew him well enough to salute him on the street, but “not to for a pint with”.

Judge Keys then makes a suggestion. Since the bank account numbers are ordered, why not just look at the chronology of other accounts opened to see what date the SSA was actually opened, the 23rd or the 30th.

Documentation shows the lodgments of the monies was made on the 30th, but the legal declaration required for SSAs was signed on the 23rd.

After lunch, the questioning moves on to the lodgment by Ahern of £30,000 into the same branch on the 25th of April 1994 – just four months after lodging the money outlined above.

Murphy got a call from Ahern, who said he wanted to open an account “for the girls”. He said he had money in a safe. Murphy offered to go to St Luke’s. He suggested to Ahern he put it into an account, by topping up his SSA. SSA’s cannot go above £50,000.

Ahern opened the safe behind him, and handed the cash to Murphy. It was probably in an envelope. Murphy counted right there in front of Ahern, but can’t remember the denominations – but it was easy to carry. Ahern said he had saved it, and then said he had more – in a safe in Government buildings. He said to Ahern it was ridiculous to keep the money in a safe. The extra over and about the 50k was to go into the current account. He left the form for opening accounts for “the girls” with Ahern.

On August 8th, in St Luke’s again, Murphy sat outside Ahern’s office. He was there to collect money to lodge to an account for the girls. He was called into the office and was given £20,000. Murphy encouraged him to open a Retail Deposit Account. He is sketchy on whether it came from the safe, and again on the denominations. Murphy again counted out the cash in front of Ahern. He also collected the forms, he thinks.

Murphy then proceeded to put the £20,000 into the worst interest paying account, despite it being for “the girls'” education. The money was withdrawn from this account on October 13th into a retail deposit account, which pays better interest.

That was basically it, next we have Des Richardson.

Debating Iraq’s Transition

Things seem to be going well in Iraq of late. Tom Friedman asks why Rice isn’t not on the diplomatic offensive combined with the military surge. He is hinting at what I suspect – there’s a real chance that the insurgency is simply holding fire until the surge has run its course.

Is she just keeping away from the Iraq mess to save her image, or does she know that the Iraqi politicians will not and cannot seize this moment to reach a grand bargain, because making big public concessions to one another is still extremely dangerous in a country like Iraq. It is an invitation for assassination.

Robert Kaplan meanwhile writes about building tribal loyalties from the ground up, not imposing democracy from the top down.

Ahern's loan

So Ahern took out a bank loan, like a common man would, to pay off what he owed in legal fees following his seperation. Ahern did say during the Dobson interview that this was the case. But why did the bank not ask for security? Ahern was taking out a loan of almost £20,000, which amounted to more than half his annual salary at the time (as best I can find out the Minister for Finance two years later was on £40,000 a year).

Here is the transcript from today.

Not alone did Ahern take out the loan, but he also apparently had money to lodge into an SSA. And why can’t the bank official remember opening the SSA for Ahern? Why was Ahern even taking out a loan when he had £50,000 in cash in a safe? Why did he need another £22,500 from his friends on top of his £50,000 in savings, receiving that £22,500 within days of taking out the loan for almost £20,000? The following year friends loaned him another £16,500, on top of the £22,500, on top of the £50,000 he saved (though he says that was all swallowed up by bills), and on top of the near £20,000 loan. And then there was the £8,000 gift from Manchester businessmen.

The allegation is that Ahern received corrupt payments, of figures in and around those figures that are being talked about here. The Tribunal is entirely right to try and get to the bottom of where all the money came from, and why.

Does anyone know how much Ahern is said to have earned between 1986 and 1993?


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