A marketing executive with Aer Lingus Holidays told a fraud trial jury he was "given to understand" by the company's financial controller that it owned the Lanzarote apartment block which is at the centre of the case.

Mr Richard Cullen told defence counsel, Mr Peter Cush SC, he was given a list of properties, including one called Los Hibiscos, by Mr Peter Noone in December 1988 and instructed to calculate brochure prices for package holidays to them. He would only be asked as a marketing executive to work out prices for apartments owned by the company. Mr Cullen told prosecuting counsel, Mr Erwan Mill Arden SC, he had looked at Los Hibiscos some years earlier while contracts manager for Aer Lingus Holidays and had discarded it as unsuitable. He moved from contracts to marketing in June 1987.

"I was not impressed with Los Hibiscos and now three or so years later Peter Noone said they were `getting involved' with it," Mr Cullen said. He was not impressed by the management style of Aer Lingus Holidays's chief executive, Mr Malachi Faughnan.

It was day 20 of the trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court of Mr Peter Keely, of Carrig Avenue, Dun Laoghaire and Mr Desmond P. Flynn, of Tritonville Avenue, Sandymount, who have pleaded not guilty of conspiracy to defraud.

Both men deny they conspired together and with Mr Noone on dates from March 1987 to November 1988 to defraud Aer Lingus Holidays by misappropriating funds to purchase part of the Los Hibiscos apartment complex for their own use and benefit.

The jury also heard a former senior Aer Lingus executive, Mr Michael Delaney, say he knew "absolutely nothing" about Los Hibiscos nor of a company called Delmont Investments until he read about them in the media.

Mr Delaney, who was Aer Lingus general sales manager and a director of Aer Lingus Holidays, also related how he felt "a sickening in my stomach" when he read a statement made by a previous witness suggesting he would come to court to commit perjury.

He was upset by the comment, as reported in the media on October 8th, of former Aer Lingus Holidays chief executive, Mr Faughnan, that he would not be surprised to learn how all top Aer Lingus executives would deny they were aware of false accounting.

Mr Delaney told prosecuting counsel, Mr Kenneth Mills SC, that an Aer Lingus Commercial Investments Review Board monitored the activities of all its subsidiary companies. The Aer Lingus Holidays proposal to

lease-purchase apartment properties was approved by the Commercial Investments Review Board to the main board.

He considered then and still considered the proposals relating to the Las Vegas and La Penita blocks in Lanzarote and the Ecudor property in Malaga to be very good business.

Mr Delaney revealed he was aware through a report at the Commercial Investments Review Board that a dormant Aer Lingus company called Cara Marketing had been used in the Aer Lingus Holidays lease-purchase transaction concerning San Francisco Park. He left Aer Lingus Holidays in October 1988 when he changed jobs in Aer Lingus.

"I was surprised and horrified to read in the media reports that ALH [Aer Lingus Holidays] was involved in breaking Spanish law in relation to the purchase of these properties," he said. He would not have agreed to that as a board member.

The trial continues with legal argument in the absence of the jury which is to return on Monday.