Man faces charge of not disclosing bogus account
The man is thought to have had a substantial amount of money in the account.
He is to be charged today at Dublin District Court with failure to disclose to Revenue authorities the existence of his account.
Up to the end of May this year, the Revenue Commissioners collected €808 million from bogus non-resident accounts (BNR).
BNRs were used by Irish citizens as a means of avoiding paying tax on interest earned on savings. The phenomenon emerged in the mid-1980s after the introduction of DIRT tax.
The account holders provided a foreign address to banks and claimed they were not residents of the State. Many bank managers were implicating in facilitation the tax evasion, although they strongly denied such claims.
Following the DIRT inquiry in 1999-2001, the Revenue Commissioners appealed to BNR holders to come forward. The voluntary disclosure scheme ended in November 2001.
The following February Revenue began detecting account holders who failed to come forward and initially came up with more than 1,800 holders. Revenue sought information from financial institutions by way of High Court orders and followed that up by writing to all of those identified.
By October 2002, 30,000 enquiry letters were sent out, followed by a further 40,000 letters the following January. The inquiry related to an estimated 35,000 non-resident accounts which had Irish addresses connected to them. It has since emerged that:
* By the end of November 2003, 7,500 individuals had still not come forward.
* By the end of 2003, more than 20,000 cases had been finalised and €258m was collected.
* In January 2004, a final 28,000 general inquiry letters were issued. The 2004 yield was €87.2m, bringing the total to €787m.
* Up to the end of May 2005, the total yield rose to €808m.
