The successful property developer, Mr John Byrne, whose main companies have been owned by a Cayman Islands trust since 1972, said yesterday the company which runs the trust is refusing to send him documents in relation to his affairs.
Mr Byrne is a very wealthy man and not the sort you would expect would have difficulty getting such information. However, he said it appeared it was the policy of his Cayman trust company.
He was giving evidence about Central Tourist Holdings Ltd, a company he owned with Mr Denis Foley and two others.
The company, which owned the Central Hotel, Ballybunion, owed Guinness & Mahon bank £135,000 in 1985. The debt was cleared in September of that year, but the evidence is that none of the owners of the company knew this.
Furthermore, the evidence is that no one knows whose money was used to pay off the debt and that whoever paid it off has never subsequently looked for the money back. As Mr Byrne said on a number of occasions yesterday, it is all very mysterious.
The tribunal has established that the money which cleared the loan came from an account in the name Guinness Mahon Cayman Trust (now Ansbacher Cayman Ltd), the company which operated Mr Byrne's trust. Mr Byrne said his solicitor had been told by the Cayman trustees that there was nothing on the trust's records showing any such payment from his trust and they were satisfied no such payment had been made.
The loan to Central Tourist Holdings was backed by funds in an account in the name of Guinness Mahon Cayman Trust, but Mr Byrne said he did not know this.
The late Mr Des Traynor, who died in 1994 but who in 1985 was a financial adviser to Mr Byrne, a trustee of his Cayman trust, defacto chairman of Guinness & Mahon bank and chairman of Guinness Mahon Cayman Trust, would not have had the latitude to put the backing in place, or pay off the loan, without Mr Byrne's permission. "I'd be very surprised and disappointed if he did it without my consent," Mr Byrne said.
He said he had never authorised the backing (or securing) of any of his or his companies' loans with deposits linked to his trust in the Cayman Islands. In the context of all the details which have emerged to date in relation to Mr Byrne's business affairs, this was a significant statement.
Last year the High Court heard that an inquiry by an authorised officer, Mr Gerry Ryan, into the affairs of Ansbacher Cayman had established that of £24 million sterling lent by Irish Intercontinental Bank (IIB) in the years 1991 to 1997 and backed by funds in the Ansbacher deposits, £17.5 million sterling had been lent to Mr Byrne's companies.
Mr Byrne was asked how a company he was involved with could have had a substantial loan repaid and he not become aware of it. His recollection was that the loan was paid off with the proceeds from the sale of the Central Hotel in 1986. However, he accepted that the evidence showed this was not the case.
When Mr Jerry Healy SC, for the tribunal, asked whose money had backed the loan to Central Tourist Holdings Mr Byrne said: "I wouldn't have a clue." When Mr Healy said a Cayman trust had discharged the company's debts, Mr Byrne said: "Well, if it happened it happened."