DES CROWLEY:DES CROWLEY, who has died, was a financial journalist whose career, which began in England, spanned more than 35 years.
He broke one of the biggest stories of his career when in January 1983 the Evening Press published his article stating that Charles Haughey owed Allied Irish Banks more than £1 million.
AIB responded immediately with an unsigned press release, flatly denying the report and describing it as "outlandlishly inaccurate". The Evening Press was compelled to publish what amounted to a retraction.
But Crowley had to wait 14 years until he was proven right by the Moriarty Tribunal. Liam St John Devlin explained to the tribunal why the question of Mr Haughey's debt was never on the AIB board's agenda.
"The reason," he said, "is that there was a general feeling among the board of directors that the less they knew about him the better."
Born in Ballyclough, Co Cork, in 1944, Des Crowley was educated at St Augustine's College, Dungarvan. From there he went to University College Cork where he secured a B Comm. He later did a Masters in Economics at UCC.
After a four-year stint as an investment analyst in London he turned to journalism, working for the Daily Telegraph. Following a spell at the London Evening Standard in 1977 he returned to Ireland where he became business editor of the Hibernia magazine.
Three years later he became business editor of the Sunday Tribune, and subsequently transferred to the Sunday Press.
Once described by a former colleague Paul Tansey as "the country's best investigative financial journalist", he paid little heed to publicity handouts, preferring to go to primary sources.
In line with his secular republican outlook, he was a member of the Divorce Action Group which campaigned over three decades for the removal of the constitutional prohibition of divorce. Interviewed in 1980 for a feature on the group in this newspaper, he stated his belief that the law should have no intrinsic religious values. "Law should be based on investigated social facts, not dogma," he said.
His wife Susan, children Karl, Jenny and Leo and grandson Jack survive him.
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Des Crowley: born 1944; died August 18th, 2008