‘Close friends’ keep their distance in tribunal evidence

IN September 2006 An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern went on RTÉ and described NCB stockbroker Padraic O’Connor as among his long-standing friends.

He was in a special group — not political friends but personal friends.

“People who cared about me,” he told interviewer Brian Dobson.

However, on Thursday this week Mr O’Connor reiterated to the Mahon Planning Tribunal that he did not consider the leader of Fianna Fáil a personal friend.

“I was not a close friend. Since I left NCB eight years ago, I suppose I met Mr Ahern once or twice,” he said.

More damning was his assertion that a £5,000 donation he handed over to Fianna Fáil fundraiser Des Richardson in 1993 was not supposed to be for Mr Ahern’s personal use.

Mr O’Connor told the tribunal it was a party donation made in the form of a cheque to a holding company operated by Mr Richardson. This was later supported by his NCB colleagues who remembered the donation.

Mr O’Connor said he was told at the time Mr Ahern had become treasurer of the party and his constituency expenses had to be met.

Already this week Mr Richardson told the tribunal he had always intended the money to be used to settle Mr Ahern’s personal legal fees.

He had targeted close friends who could free up £5,000, but on the day he met Mr O’Connor he neglected to mention the then minister for finance’s marital strife — he did not want to be accused of spreading rumours.

This week, Mr O’Connor dismissed the ‘friends’ explanation. It was a political donation he said.

He has cast doubt on the truthfulness of Mr Ahern’s testimony. When asked did he think the Taoiseach’s version of events involving NCB stockbrokers were untrue, Mr O’Connor said “yes”.

This is critical because if Mr Ahern and Mr Richardson can prove all payments are linked to personal appeals, it would blow out of the water any accusation he took money for political gain.

Interestingly, the cheque given by Mr O’Connor was not cashed in December 1993 and sat idle until March the next year, three months after the “dig-out” money was received and lodged into Mr Ahern’s new special savings account.

An invoice was sent to NCB for the amount through one of the holding companies operated by Mr Richardson, in this case Euro Workforce Ltd.

As it turned out, the cheque was damaged and had to be returned when it was being lodged. It is as yet unclear the outcome of that cheque; it was not part of the “dig out” money given to Bertie Ahern on December 22, 1993.

However, the real issue is whether this cheque was symptomatic of something wider or as the tribunal asked this week, did it reflect a “modus operandi” for Mr Richardson’s holding companies?

Questioning of this single payment, written for one purpose but destined for another, has prompted the tribunal to pry open another door. On Tuesday it sought to get full access to the accounts from Mr Richardson’s holding companies Willdover Ltd, Roevin Ltd and Euro Workforce.

The tribunal questioned whether the O’Connor payment could be the key to understanding what was going on. It said it was possible the invoice sent to NCB stockbrokers was used by Euro Workforce to extend its overdraft and facilitate part of the Christmas ‘93 payment to Mr Ahern.

The tribunal queried whether donations originating from genuine political donors could be used to cover payments for Mr Ahern’s personal use and back up the ultimate paper trail to Cork property developer Owen O’Callaghan.

“If significant payments, I emphasise the word ‘if’, significant payments were made by or on behalf of Mr Owen O’Callaghan to or on behalf of Mr Ahern, it does not necessarily follow that said payments were not made indirectly through one or more companies in a variety of amounts,” said tribunal chairman Judge Alan Mahon.

In this statement, the tribunal declared its misgivings about Mr Ahern’s use of language and the way he denied certain allegations.

On Thursday, Mr Ahern defended his statements about Mr O’Connor and the NCB donation. He said he had always maintained the December 1993 “dig-out” money was raised by close friends and by implication not necessarily paid for by close friends.

He attached his friendship tags to the middlemen, Des Richardson and the late Gerry Brennan, not the people who signed the cheques.

The tribunal is now focused on investigating if the same logic was used when Mr Ahern strenuously denied ever taking money from Owen O’Callaghan or dealing in dollars.

Tribunal lawyer Des O’Neill wants to find out if the middlemen, in the form of Mr Richardson’s companies, had direct dealings with dollar benefactors or Mr O’Callaghan, in proceeds directed to Mr Ahern.

He wants to establish once and for all if statements made by Mr Ahern on the nature of his relationship with NCB Stockbrokers and Padraic O’Connor are symptomatic of his way of operating. It is this which was evident on Thursday when Mr Ahern tried to explain his previous views on being a close friend of Mr O’Connor: “I said in the past that those who gave me the money, it was raised by friends and I still say that is exactly correct."