Prince's Investments Ltd, the company which operates the Brandon Hotel in Tralee, Co Kerry and which has featured in the Moriarty tribunal, has been selected for a Revenue investigation.

Notes in the company's accounts for the year ended October 31st, 2000, recently filed in the Companies Registration Office, reveal the fact of the inquiry under the heading "contingent liabilities".

"The company has been notified by the Revenue Commissioners that an enquiry has commenced into the taxation affairs of the company. While the financial implications, if any, for the company cannot be ascertained with certainty until the Revenue Commissioners have completed their enquiry, the directors are of the opinion that no provision is required in the financial statements for additional taxation as a result of this matter."

The company reported a loss on ordinary activities of £517,398 (€656,960). Gross profit was £3.9 million, with staff costs, depreciation and other operating charges amounting to £4.2 million.

Last year, the Moriarty tribunal heard that a £116,000 sterling (€185,659) loan taken out by Prince's Investments in 1975 from Guinness & Mahon bank was paid back with the transfer of £186,986 sterling from the Ansbacher deposits 10 years later.

However, Haughey Boland accountants, now part of Deloitte & Touche - when conducting work for Prince's Investments in 1985 - was sent bogus statements from Guinness & Mahon purporting to show the loan as still being in existence. The interest on the loan would have been chargeable against tax.

When the loan was eventually paid off, in 1987, the money handed over went into an account in Guinness & Mahon controlled by the late Mr Des Traynor and from which money has been shown to have been passed to Mr Charles Haughey.

Mr John Byrne, one of the principals of Prince's Investment, told the tribunal he presumed Mr Traynor had been behind these transactions, but said he knew nothing about them at the time. The only person who could have paid off the loan without his permission was, he said, Mr Traynor, who was a trustee of his Ansbacher trust.

Mr Byrne, a long-time friend of Mr Haughey, also said: "I'd like to catagorically state that I have never given Mr Haughey a penny or a pound in my life."

Accounts have recently been filed by Mr Byrne's property companies, Carlisle Trust Ltd, Dublin City Estates Ltd, Alstead Securities and Smithfield Properties Ltd. The ultimate parent of the companies is Prospect Holdings, an unlimited Cayman Island company which is controlled by a Cayman trust.

The December 1999 balance sheet for Carlisle Trust shows the accumulated profit and loss account has increased by just less than £100,000, to £847,000. The company's indebtedness as at September 29th, 2000 was £10.7 million. The other companies accounts indicate similar comparatively modest changes in the profit and loss accounts and large indebtedness figures. Carlisle and Alstead have loans with IIB Bank which total £15 million.

IIB Bank, formerly Irish Intercontinental Bank, held the Ansbacher deposits subsequent to their transfer from Guinness & Mahon bank. The High Court was told in September 1999 that an investigation by an authorised officer into Ansbacher Cayman had discovered loans to Carlisle and Alstead during the period 1991 to 1997 totalling £17.5 million sterling which were backed by cash deposits provided by Ansbacher Cayman.