Des Richardson said a Cork bank official's reference to a bank account in Manchester is mistaken, writes Colm Keena
Cash, dollars, safes and Manchester re-entered the tribunal's public inquiry into the finances of the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, yesterday.
Ahern's close associate and the man he appointed in 1993 to work on clearing Fianna Fáil's then £3 million debt, Des Richardson, told the tribunal he was given $10,000 in cash at a lunch in a hotel in Manchester.
Ahern, he told tribunal counsel Des O'Neill SC, was not at the "liquid lunch", which preceded a trip to Old Trafford to watch a Manchester United fixture in April or May 1994. Richardson's host was Norman Turner, a successful English businessman who at the time was involved in an ambitious property development project for the Phoenix Park in Dublin, involving a proposed casino.
Richardson said he was given an envelope containing the cash as a contribution towards Fianna Fáil and Turner requested that the payment be kept confidential.
Richardson said that when he returned to Dublin and to his office in the Berkeley Court Hotel, he placed the dollars in a safe, left them there for a month, and then converted the money to Irish pounds.
He did not lodge the cash to the Fianna Fáil account used for the receipt of the proceeds of fundraising, because of Turner's request that the matter be kept confidential, Richardson said.
When asked how making a cash lodgement could reveal anything about the donor's identity, Richardson said he did what he did arising from Turner's request that the payment be kept confidential.
The matter of the dollar payment was mentioned in a scribbled memo from Richardson to Fianna Fáil written in 1994 found by the tribunal in the party's records.
Richardson said he spent the cash bought with the dollars during 1994 on corporate gifts purchased from a company called Castlemanor Software, for use in fundraising at golf events and the Galway Races.
Dollars have featured before at the tribunal. In September, the Taoiseach was asked about a cash lodgement he made in December 1994 which equated to exactly $45,000 when one of the exchange rates being used on the day in question was applied. Ahern said the cash lodged was not dollars, but rather sterling and Irish pounds he had been given a few days previously by Manchester-based Michael Wall.
This matter was not mentioned yesterday.
Manchester popped up in another context during Richardson's evidence concerning a company called Trent Valley Ltd, and a debt it owed to Ulster Bank in Mallow in late 1994. An internal bank memo stated that Richardson was "adamant that the money is in the pipeline and that he has instructed a bank in Manchester to forward them to us. Peter did not get the specifics on the Manchester bank" Richardson said the bank note was mistaken. He had worked for a plc in Manchester but had "no recall of ever being in a bank in Manchester". He never made an arrangement with a bank in Manchester for the transfer of funds to Ulster Bank. Evidence may be heard in the future from a witness or witnesses from Ulster Bank.
In the event the debt was settled with a payment from Willdover Ltd, the company Richardson used when invoicing Fianna Fáil for his fundraising activities. When invoicing for expenses incurred in this work, he used his own name, rather than Willdover.
Richardson lodged donations received for the party to the party account, though he said he did on occasion use cash given to him for the party, on expenditures that formed part of his fundraising efforts, rather than incur the expenditure and subsequently bill the party. Fianna Fáil would always be informed, he said.
As well as fundraising for Fianna Fáil, Richardson was also in 1993 active in fundraising for Ahern's constituency operation.
O'Neill said the former managing director of NCB, Pádraig O'Connor, would say that £5,000 that formed part of a sum given to Bertie Ahern in December 1993 was sought from him by Richardson for Ahern's constituency operation and not Ahern personally. Richardson said it was his view that O'Connor gave him the money as a contribution towards legal costs Ahern had incurred around this time.
The two men discussed their different views on the matter in July 2006 but it was not until "September/October" of 2006 that Richardson told Ahern that O'Connor did not agree the payment was intended for Ahern personally.
Tribunal counsel said that following a report in The Irish Times in September 2006, Ahern made a public statement in which he named O'Connor as one of the people who had made a contribution towards Ahern's personal finances. From the evidence, it would seem Richardson soon afterwards told him that O'Connor did not agree.