Bord na Mona's retiring chairman, Mr Pat Dineen, appeared before the High Court inspectorate examining the Ansbacher affair last May.

In an interview with The Irish Times, Mr Dineen said his name figured in a confidential report on the scheme by Mr Gerry Ryan, an authorised officer appointed by the Tanaiste, Ms Harney. Mr Ryan's report - which said 120 senior figures had dealings with the secretive bank - led to the appointment last September of the inspectorate, which is chaired by the retired High Court judge, Mr Justice Declan Costello.

Mr Dineen said he gave evidence in relation to an investment he made in the early 1980s in a trailer park in Arizona.

His shares and those of his co-investors, who included a Fine Gael TD, the late Mr Hugh Coveney, were held in Guinness & Mahon Cayman Trust, the company which subsequently became Ansbacher (Cayman) Ltd.

"I never had an offshore bank account, anywhere, ever. I did appear before Justice Costello and I repeated the same denial to him," he said. "I never had a bank account with them," he said of Guinness & Mahon Cayman Trust.

The US investment was his sole link with Ansbacher, Mr Dineen said.

"The implication was that I was some sort of a tax cheat, which I am not. I have paid all my taxes to the Revenue Commissioners."

Mr Dineen declined to reveal who his co-investors were apart from Mr Coveney, whom he described as "one of my closest personal friends".

The total value of the investment is believed to have been in the region of $2.7 million, which was borrowed from AIB in New York. "That was in 1980 and the project went bankrupt in the mid-80s," Mr Dineen said.

It is thought that AIB sued for a return of the sum borrowed and that lawyers who set up the investment in Roadhaven, the company which owned the trailer park, may have made a payment to the bank as part of a settlement when it called in personal guarantees on the sums borrowed.

Mr Dineen had no knowledge of the other activities of Guinness & Mahon at the time, he said.