Mahon Tribunal The former Fianna Fáil TD Mr Liam Lawlor has again escaped the threat of imprisonment after the tribunal decided for a second time to defer a decision on his failure to co-operate.
The chairman, Mr Alan Mahon, said the tribunal would decide in September whether to refer his case to the High Court, after it had analysed and considered over 11,000 pages of financial documentation provided by Mr Lawlor earlier this week.
However, Mr Lawlor is facing a new threat of criminal charges with the disclosure by Judge Mahon that the tribunal is also considering whether to refer "contradictory evidence" given by the politician to the DPP for possible prosecution.
The alleged contradiction relates to the politician's evidence about the sale of one acre of his land in Lucan, which involved a £100,000 sterling under-the-counter payment to him.
In his ruling, Judge Mahon said the tribunal had not been able to satisfy itself that Mr Lawlor had "belatedly" complied with its orders in the short time since he had submitted a "substantial volume of documentation" on Tuesday.
It was clear that Mr Lawlor had not sworn his affidavit in the right form and had not remedied deficiencies in his documentation. The chairman ordered Mr Lawlor to file a proper affidavit and submit any further documents in his possession by September 5th.
Last week the tribunal ruled that the former TD had failed to co-operate but gave him one last chance to file documents relating to his financial affairs. Mr Lawlor will now learn his fate in mid-September, when the tribunal sits again after the summer recess.
Only 300 pages of the documentation submitted clearly relate to the matters under investigation; because the rest is "unscheduled", i.e. without an index, it isn't clear whether this is relevant.
Therefore the extent to which Mr Lawlor was in breach of the tribunal's order remained unclear, according to Mr Des O'Neill SC, for the tribunal.
Mr O'Neill had earlier said the documents furnished by Mr Lawlor contained "significant and obvious deficits". First, the accompanying affidavit was not properly sworn; Mr Lawlor said this had not been possible due to pressure of time.
In addition, Mr Lawlor had not listed what documents were formerly in his possession or power of procurement.
Mr O'Neill said there were "serious deficiencies" in the indexed documents in a number of areas, although it was possible that there were relevant documents in the remainder of the 11,000 documents provided.
Mr Lawlor had not dealt with the setting up of his bank account in Gibraltar, and he had not accounted for €316,000 in proceeds from the sale of the one acre of land in Lucan. Most of this was spent in a nine-month period last year.
Mr Lawlor's solicitor in London and Prague, Mr Tony Seddon, who had expressed an unwillingness to give evidence to the tribunal, now says he will come to Dublin. Mr O'Neill said Mr Seddon was scheduled to give evidence on September 17th.
Mr Lawlor said he had had a heated conversation with another of his solicitors, Mr Nicholas Morgan, in London last Friday. After this meeting, Mr Morgan had "belatedly" provided the documents required by the tribunal. His overseas lawyers had done everything possible to meet the tight deadline for producing documents, having had the opportunity to do this for several months.
Given the lack of time available, it was "virtually impossible" to provide a schedule for all the documents provided. He didn't see how he could advance the matter any further. If he made a complaint about Mr Morgan to the Law Society in Jersey, this could put an end to the process of co-operation.
If there were "gaps, anomalies or missing (items)" this wasn't by intent and he apologised.
Regarding the proceeds from the land sale, he said these outgoings were recorded on statements from banks and credit card companies. The money went on normal day-to-day spending.
"I honestly thought the tribunal was investigating where you received payments from, not where you spent money. I've no problem disclosing it all, but you're coming at it from the other side," Mr Lawlor said.
Judge Mahon said the tribunal was interested in Mr Lawlor's spending because he had claimed that he couldn't afford to pay his lawyers £10,000 in fees for their co-operation.
Mr Lawlor said the reference to £10,000 was a "red herring". His fees could amount to £120,000; he simply didn't know yet.
Anyone could understand the tribunal's bewilderment that hundreds of thousands of euro could be spent in a short period, the chairman said.
