CRH chief executive Liam O'Mahony has claimed that a €125,000 donation in 1997 to a charity run by Poland's first lady was an example of good corporate citizenship and was not linked to the privatisation of a state-owned cement plant two years earlier.
Addressing for the first time allegations that a $1 million (€839,000) bribe was paid on the company's behalf to a former Polish privatisation minister, Mr O'Mahony said CRH had neither paid nor authorised such a bribe.
"CRH have not paid any money, directly or indirectly, to government officials in relation to the 1995 privatisation," he said.
Mr O'Mahony said that evidence given to a Polish parliamentary commission by Marek Dochnal, a former lobbyist, was "ambiguous" and that it was not clear that any allegations were being made about CRH.
Last month however, Roman Giertych, a member of the parliamentary commission, told the inquiry that Mr Dochnal "maintains that the CRH company initially paid him two million commission for the privatisation of Cementownia Ozarow, and that later he split the sum of $1 million with Wieslaw Kaczmarek".
Mr Kaczmarek denies accepting money from Mr Dochnal, who is in prison awaiting trial on an unrelated bribery charge. Mr O'Mahony said that CRH made a donation to Jolanta Kwasniewska's charity in connection with a visit to Ireland by her husband, president Aleksander Kwasniewski, in 1997.
"These were made very publicly. It's part of being a member of the community," he said.
Ms Kwasniewska told the inquiry that Mr Dochnal introduced her to CRH and that the company suggested that he could help her to organise her visit to Ireland. CRH sources claimed last week that the company's sole connection with Mr Dochnal involved the purchase of his stake in a holding company that bought the privatised cement plant.
Another commission member, Zbigniew Wassermann, said that the "regularity" of the Ozarow privatisation was in doubt.
Holding Cement Polski (HCP), in which CRH had a 40 per cent shareholding, acquired a 75 per cent shareholding in the privatised plant. CRH paid IR£29.7 million at the time and increased its stake in the plant over the next three years. By the end of 1998, CRH had bought out the other major shareholder, Elektrim and owned 96 per cent of HCP, which owned 87 per cent of the plant.
Mr Wassermann quoted to the inquiry testimony from a former associate of Mr Dochnal's that his contacts with Elektrim were of "utmost significance for the privatisation of Ozarow".
