SENATOR IVOR Callely received a second political donation from a businessman involved in the company whose invoices were used to support a €3,000 mobile phone expenses claim long after it had ceased trading.
Kevin Baxter said yesterday he contributed €800-€900 to the politician by attending a dinner organised by Mr Callely in Dáil Éireann around Christmas 2007.
No record of the contribution, which is above the limit for declaration, exists with the Standards in Public Office Commission.
This contribution is in addition to a €1,500 contribution Mr Baxter made to the politician in 2005, which appears on the records of the commission.
Mr Baxter is the son of James Kevin Baxter, a director of the now-dissolved Business Communications Ltd, and worked in the company as a young apprentice.
Mr Callely filed a series of invoices from the company to the Oireachtas to support a claim for €3,000 in mobile phone expenses between 2002 and 2006. Business Communications, which was based in Fairview, ceased trading in 1994.
Both Mr Baxter jnr and snr yesterday said they would welcome any Garda investigation into the matter and called on Mr Callely to explain how the invoices came to be used in his expenses filing.
Both men also said they did not supply the invoices that were used by Mr Callely and did not recognise the signatures used on the documents on Business Communications notepaper.
Mr Baxter said he didn’t know how the invoices came to be used for claiming expenses but “he definitely didn’t get them from me or my father”.
Having checked his records, he said he found receipts confirming he had contributed €1,500 to Mr Callely’s golf classic at the K Club in 2005.
After this, his name went on the politician’s mailing list and he received regular requests for contributions.
Two or three years later, around Christmas 2007, he went to a dinner in Dáil Éireann organised for Mr Callely and bought a table for €800-€900.
Rules on political funding require the declaration of all individual donations over €634.87. The onus to declare a donation lies with the politician.
James Kevin Baxter, who is retired, called on the Garda to investigate the allegations about Mr Callely’s expenses and expressed confidence that his good name would be vindicated as a result.
Mr Baxter said his company may have done some business with Mr Callely in 1990 by putting in a small phone system in his office.
“But we certainly weren’t doing anything with him in 2003 or 2005. We weren’t selling mobile phones then.
“We got out of that business in 2000 and we didn’t have an agency for Eircom.”
He said it wasn’t possible for his company to have produced an invoice in the form filed by Mr Callely for his expenses because “it was all computerised” by then.
Mr Baxter said he was not politically minded and was “no supporter” of Mr Callely. “If I got Ivor now, I’d like to strangle him,” he remarked.
Mr Callely could not be reached for comment yesterday.
