The late Mr John Furze was, after the late Mr Des Traynor, the key figure in the secret dealings uncovered by the Dunnes payments to politicians tribunal. He remained a key figure in the finances of the former Taoiseach, Mr Charles Haughey. "I don't know who's in charge now," one figure close to Mr Haughey's payment chain said last night.
The structure controlled by Mr Furze catered for paying around £300,000 a year for Mr Haughey's living expenses, using money from accounts held in the Irish Intercontinental Bank in Dublin. The accounts held monies controlled from the Cayman Islands and were technically "offshore".
When Mr Traynor died in 1994, Mr Furze travelled to Ireland for his funeral. Along with an Irish banker, Mr Padraig Collery, Mr Furze went to Mr Traynor's office on Fitzwilliam Square and looked through the files.
Documents relating to the so-called Ansbacher Deposits were destroyed or removed. Crucial documents recording money going into Mr Haughey's accounts are understood to have been brought back to the islands by Mr Furze.
It is these documents, if they still exist, which would identify to any new tribunal who else besides Mr Ben Dunne, if anyone, was putting money into the accounts for Mr Haughey. The value of these documents as evidence is all the greater now that Mr Furze has died.
While some of these documents may be held by Ansbacher Ltd, the Cayman bank with which Mr Furze worked up to 1995, others will have been held by Mr Furze personally and a trust company he controlled, Hamilton Ross.
This company, a fund management company, opened an account in the Irish Intercontinental Bank in Dublin in the early 1990s with money from the so-called Ansbacher Deposits. Mr Furze was a director of Ansbacher and controlled Hamilton Ross. The Haughey accounts, coded `S8' and `S9', moved from Ansbacher into the Hamilton Ross accounts. So too did other memorandum accounts.
Mr Collery maintained memorandum accounts for both the Hamilton Ross and the Ansbacher monies, working first for Mr Traynor and then for Mr Furze.
The secret `S8' and `S9' accounts of Mr Haughey, about which evidence was heard at the tribunal, are now part of the Hamilton Ross monies lodged with Irish Intercontinental.
Mr Haughey's bills are managed by Business Enterprises Ltd, a small Clyde Road financial consultancy set up by a former Haughey Boland accountant, Mr Jack Stakelum, who was engaged to look after Mr Haughey's affairs in 1991.
Mr Stakelum pays the bills using money which is passed on to his company, as needed, from the accounts overseen by Mr Collery. It was Mr Furze, as the person who managed these complicated affairs, who approved the new arrangement following Mr Traynor's death.
In his evidence to the tribunal Mr Collery agreed with Mr Denis McCullough SC that the files on the Dunne money which went into Mr Haughey's accounts had probably been destroyed or taken back to the Cayman Islands.
It was mostly likely for this reason that Mr Furze had objected in the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands against the tribunal being allowed take evidence there. Mr Furze was successful and the court's decision to rule against the tribunal is being appealed.
However, now that the key witness is dead, taking all he knew with him, the tribunal must reassess whether it should proceed with the appeal.
Some weeks ago, The Irish Times reported that a signal from the Attorney General might decide whether the tribunal would proceed with this appeal. Last Monday week, submissions were heard by the tribunal. Mr Edward Comyn SC, for the public interest, said the tribunal should only proceed with its appeal if it felt it was needed for the purposes of its work. The tribunal should not proceed simply to pave the way, so to speak, for any subsequent tribunal.
Mr Comyn is instructed by the Attorney General's office. Nevertheless, it was thought that the tribunal was going to persist with its appeal. That will have to be reassessed now, given that one of the key witnesses to the work of this or any future tribunal investigating Mr Haughey's finances or the Ansbacher Deposits, is no longer available to give evidence.
