Lawlor was investigated by Ulster Bank
Details of the investigation by the bank’s Palmerstown branch emerged after tribunal lawyers said that Mr Lawlor was wrong to suggest that he had initially informed the inquiry about stg£700,000 he held in bank accounts in Liechtenstein.
Barrister Des O’Neill said the tribunal had learnt of the accounts at the Landesbank in the small Alpine state after the Ulster Bank became suspicious about a £50,000 lodgement into an account belonging to taxi-driver, John Patrick Long in 1998.
Mr Long, a close personal friend of Mr Lawlor who has accompanied him each day to Dublin Castle, opened two bank accounts in his own name for the politician in 1997.
Ulster Bank was initially informed by the Bank of Ireland, through which the money passed, that the funds were sourced from a client known to it. Ulster Bank was dissatisfied with this response and after further queries it established that the £50,000 came from offshore funds held by Mr Lawlor.
In a letter to the bank in November 1998, Mr Long explained that the money was the repatriation of funds from the time he had spent living in Britain. Yesterday, Mr Lawlor admitted that he had actually drafted the letter for his friend, even though he knew this explanation was false. He said he had made it up to conceal the source of the £50,000 because he was being pursued by a number of banks for debts and he was afraid the Bank of Ireland would “take the whole lot”.
However, Mr Lawlor accused the Tribunal of being ‘disingenuous’ in suggesting he hadn’t disclosed the existence of the Liechtenstein accounts to the inquiry’s legal team as he was receiving information from the banks ‘in parallel’ to the Tribunal.
During his seventh day in the witness box, the former TD was repeatedly accused of failing to draw a connection between his Liechtenstein
accounts and the proceeds of his land dealings in Ireland in a series of affidavits filed in the High Court in 2001.
Although conceding that stg£685,000 stg was lodged into these offshore accounts from the sale of property at Lucan and Baldoyle, Mr Lawlor insisted that he had been forced to treat these payments as loans which could be recalled at any stage.
“You had the truth at your fingertips but chose to paint a picture,” said tribunal chairman Judge Alan Mahon. Mr O’Neill said the Mr Lawlor played cat and mouse with the tribunal until overwhelming proof forced him to admit the true nature of his finances.
Mr Lawlor was also accused of giving “utterly false” evidence by claiming solicitor Noel Smyth had not given him documents to pass on to the tribunal.
Correspondence showed Mr Lawlor had called to Mr Smyth’s office in March 1999 and removed all his files on the undertaking that he would forward a copy of the material to the solicitor and pay a bill of over £5,000.
The tribunal heard that Mr Smyth had still not obtained a copy of the files or his legal fees from Mr Lawlor three years later.
Mr Lawlor retorted that this evidence had been manipulated by the tribunal in court proceedings which had led his imprisonment.
In other evidence, Judge Mahon said it was completely misleading for Mr Lawlor to swear in an affidavit that he sold an acre of land for £625,000 when the true figure was £825,000.
Tribunal members made a similar accusation against the former TD after it was revealed that he had taken around £300,000 from the bank account of a Czech company, Zatecka, when he had sworn that the firm had never made any profit.
It also emerged that Mr Lawlor received a £50,000 settlement from the Independent newspaper group over a report which stated he had been engaged in a land deal in Ireland.
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