Biggest gamble? Convincing the tribunal of memory lapses

A LETTER that arrived from Irish Life & Permanent in the Mahon Tribunal on March 5 was to prove pivotal in the inquiry’s investigation of Bertie Ahern’s finances and one that probably ultimately brought a premature end to his long tenure as taoiseach.

For several years since the inquiry first began to investigate Mr Ahern’s bank accounts, the former Fianna Fáil leader had consistently maintained that he had never made any sterling lodgments to his accounts.

Up to last March, the tribunal had been unable to challenge Mr Ahern’s evidence as no records of his account in the then Irish Permanent building society in Drumcondra were traceable. Mr Ahern had always insisted that the lodgments under the scrutiny of the tribunal were merely lodgments from one or more cheques for his salary and expenses.

However, the March 5 letter revealed that newly discovered records showed that several lodgments to the accounts of Mr Ahern and his daughters, Georgina and Cecilia, in 1994 were the result of sterling exchanges worth £15,450.

(The tribunal is trying to trace the source of these monies as part of its investigation of the allegation made by property developer Tom Gilmartin that a rival developer, Owen O’Callaghan gave Mr Ahern £80,000 for help over the Quarryvale shopping centre in west Dublin during the 1990s.)

In a letter written to the tribunal on April 21, which was read out in public yesterday, Mr Ahern finally conceded that the lodgments were “in all likelihood” the result of sterling exchanges. He explained that up to £13,000 arose from changing his salary and expenses cheques into sterling with the remainder coming from cash he had accumulated over the years from visits to Britain and the proceeds of winning bets.

He claimed he had “an informal arrangement” with the late Tim Kilroe — a wealthy Manchester-based businessman who had arranged a whip-round for Mr Ahern in his Four Seasons hotel in Manchester in 1994 — that the hotelier would exchange his punts for sterling.

He said up to six such transactions for sums ranging from £2,000 to £3,000 took place in the early 1990s.

Mr Ahern now presumes that he kept the sterling in his safe and subsequently exchanged the money for punts before lodging them in various Irish Permanent accounts.

However, he stressed that all the money (excluding the sterling from his gambling successes) were derived from his salary and expenses, which he takes care to point out were his only source of income at the time.

But Mr Ahern’s difficulty remains his total failure to have any recollection about his regular dealings in large sterling sums until confronted with the Irish Permanent records.

It was also pointed out to Mr Ahern yesterday that while he has always had a clear memory of keeping savings of about £34,000 in Irish punts in his safe in the early 1990s, he seems to have forgotten that there was a pile of sterling worth up to £18,000 in the exact same location at the same time.

Although Mr Ahern is a well-known sports lover, he had never previously been considered a big gambler, which made yesterday’s revelation that he has enjoyed considerable betting wins, including £8,000 in 1996, all the more surprising.

However, Mr Ahern’s attempts to persuade the tribunal that his failure to recollect important details of his finances going back over a 20-year period is genuine might prove to be his biggest gamble yet.