Haughey's financial dealings mired in controversy

The murky financial dealings of former Taoiseach Charles J Haughey have long fuelled the political rumour mill and led to the setting up of two state tribunals.

His money-spinning plans for Temple Bar and the dilapidated Dublin docklands backed up by deals to kickstart the economy made him a hero in many people’s eyes, but revelations of crooked financial dealings dogged his final years.

The three-time Taoiseach, who earned the nickname The Boss, was asked to give evidence about his wealth, and its origins, to the Moriarty tribunal but his ill-health prevented it.

Even so, the revelations have not ceased during hundreds of days of sittings.

Allegations of irregular financial dealings have surrounded Mr Haughey for decades, some of which even involved a Saudi Arabian diplomat, Irish businessmen and even possible Iraqi investors.

Once seen as one of the state’s most gifted politicians, Mr Haughey has become a symbol of a time when corruption was deeply ingrained at all levels of Irish public life.

The McCracken Tribunal found Mr Haughey had been kept in ostentatious style by a handful of rich and powerful individuals.

It put him right in the middle of a spaghetti junction of hidden payments.

Then Dunnes Stores Chairman Ben Dunne was found to have made four payments totalling €1.4m following a request from Mr Haughey’s personal financial advisor Des Traynor. The money was used to clear a debt.

The late Traynor was depositing money for his political master in an off-shore account and operating a complex system that allowed him to have access to the funds without the knowledge of the taxman.

Based in the Cayman Islands, it became known as the Ansbacher scandal and Mr Haughey lost €660,000 when it was uncovered.

McCracken led to the establishment in 1997 of the Moriarty Tribunal, which was tasked with the job of examining the financial affairs of Mr Haughey and former Fine Gael minister, Michael Lowry. Its work is still ongoing but without further testimony from Mr Haughey, it’s unlikely that much more progress can be made.

Mr Haughey’s dapper image and his spending of large sums of money on French Charvet shirts and expensive restaurants while preaching belt-tightening as a national policy raised eyebrows.

Other revelations emerged that Mr Haughey once held a personal overdraft of 35 times his Dáil salary.

And questions have been put forward asking how he afforded his impressive north Dublin home, Abbeville House, on the Dáil salary of IR£6,000 in his early days as a politician and with no sign of a mortgage.

The Moriarty Tribunal has heard evidence that he negotiated a settlement with the Revenue Commissioners for €5.7m in 2003, one of the largest ever, despite officials identifying liabilities of €8m.

The family was forced to sell part of his beloved Kinsealy estate in Co Dublin in order to settle.

These discrepancies in Mr Haughey’s personal finances covered a 20-year period, from 1977 onwards, when he was at the height of his political career.

Unpaid taxes related to gifts of large sums of money from businessman Ben Dunne and others, while Revenue Commissioners chairman Frank Daly revealed the finances of the former Taoiseach were unique in the level of secrecy and structures that surrounded them.

Daly said the Revenue was “on the back foot from the outset” in the Haughey case, and “that is what led us to negotiate” with Mr Haughey.

Mr Haughey’s love of horseracing saw him scrap tax on stud farms and he was often seen in the winners’ enclosure at tracks around the country.

But his finances even cast a shadow over the sport of kings when a Saudi Arabian diplomat claimed in 1985 he gave IR£50,000 (€65,000) to Mr Haughey for a horse or a share in a stallion.

The allegation came as investigations were launched into the granting of passports in the early 1980s to a number of Lebanese and Palestinian people associated with the Saudi billionaire, Mahmoud Fustok.

Other claims heard Michael Smurfit gave Haughey a painting by Jack B Yeats in 1990.

Smurfit told the tribunal in July 2000 that the painting, The Forge, was a gift from the Jefferson Smurfit Group, to mark his assumption of the presidency of the European Union. He claimed he intended it to be a family heirloom.

The tribunal heard controversies including the Greencore and Telecom affairs, the beef tribunal on top of his apparent wealth led Revenue to seek tax returns from the politician in 1992.

Christopher Clayton, chief inspector of taxes, said in 2000 that it seemed inappropriate and perhaps scandalous that a taoiseach should be so much in tax arrears.

But Mr Haughey was not forced to answer many burning questions about his finances in the last two years due to his deteriorating health.