Mr Padraig Collery, the Guinness & Mahon banker who operated the Ansbacher accounts with the late Mr Des Traynor, has said he believes an £80,000 payment from Dunnes Stores in 1992 was channelled through the accounts to Mr Charles Haughey.
Mr Collery told the Moriarty Tribunal yesterday that he believed the proceeds of the payment went into a special bill-paying account for the former Taoiseach code-named S8.
The £80,000 sum formed part of an £180,000 Dunnes payment lodged in an account of Carlisle Trust Ltd. The £80,000 was transferred from this account to an account belonging to Kentford Securities, a company operated by the late Mr Traynor, Mr Haughey's personal financier.
Mr Collery was shown a copy of the current account statement for Kentford dating from late 1992. It showed an £80,000 lodgement on December 1st, 1992, bringing the account balance to just under £83,000.
There followed a series of substantial withdrawals, reducing the balance to £797.75 by December 17th.
Mr Collery said these withdrawals represented payments to persons who had accounts in a general Ansbacher sterling account. They showed up in this account as a lodgement on December 10th of £84,800 sterling, representing IR£80,000.
This corresponded with an identical lodgement on the same day in Mr Haughey's account.
Mr Collery explained a "credit switch" had taken place. Money from the Kentford account was withdrawn by Ansbacher account holders and repaid in sterling to Mr Haughey's S8 account.
He said he understood monies from this account were used to pay Mr Haughey's bills. Following the £84,800 lodgement, the S8 account balance had risen to £155,717.69.
Council for Mr Haughey, Mr Eoin McGonigal SC, asked whether Mr Collery could be sure the £80,000 lodgement into Kentford was transferred to the former Taoiseach's S8 account.
"Do you know the persons who got the benefit of that £80,000 from Kentford?" asked Mr McGonigal.
"I do not," replied Mr Collery.
Mr McGonigal later asked: "Isn't the position this: that the only person that can actually tell us what happened was Mr Traynor?"
"In any of these incidents that is correct, yes," replied Mr Collery.
However, Mr Collery stressed that the two lodgements on December 10th, in the S8 account and the Ansbacher sterling account, would suggest that the £80,000 withdrawn from Kentford went to Mr Haughey.
"Because they happened around the same date . . . I believe there is reason to expect that they both relate to each other," he said.
Explaining the background to the Kentford account, Mr Collery said it had been established specifically to enable Ansbacher account holders withdraw cash. It was set up after the Ansbacher deposits were moved from Guinness & Mahon to Irish Intercontinental Bank in the early 1990s. Unlike the former, the IIB did not have a "front-office" cash facility.
Under the new arrangement, cheques would be sent by Mr Traynor to the Kentford account, from which Ansbacher accountholders could made cash withdrawals. Their withdrawals would then be debited to their Ansbacher accounts.
The address for the Kentford account was 42 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin 2. This was Mr Traynor's office at Cement Roadstone, of which he was chairman. Mr Collery would normally have met Mr Traynor there each Saturday morning to carry out the administrative work for the account.
Mr Collery confirmed that only he and Mr Traynor had access to Ansbacher account records. None were shown to outside banks. Consequently, he said, if the Revenue Commissioners had examined bank records, the internal workings of the account would not have been revealed.
Earlier, evidence was given in relation to three cheques signed by Mr Ben Dunne and made out to cash to the value of £180,000 in total. The cheques were lodged in the Carlisle Trust account.
Mr Joe Cummins, a former manager at Dunnes Stores, said Mr Dunne had requested three blank cheques. "My recollection was he told me to write them off and make sure they weren't found."
The cheques showed up in the accounts as payments to Tender meats and Neville's Bakery in Dublin and Macroom. Both companies carried out up to 600 transactions a week with Dunnes Stores. They were chosen for the payments for this reason, as the other transactions would have provided a degree of cover.
An investigation of the cheques was carried out by Price Water house on behalf of Dunnes Stores in 1994. Mr Peter Lacy, who headed the investigation, said he had discovered the cheques had been lodged in an account at Bank of Ireland's Rotunda branch.
However, he said, the bank would not reveal the identity of the account holder.
Mr Brendan Vaughan, a senior manager with Bank of Ireland, confirmed inquiries had been made in 1994 about the cheques. He was asked whether he would have disclosed the identity of the account holder as Carlisle Trust, owned by the property developer Mr John Byrne.
"Certainly not, no," he replied.
