Desmond gave Haughey cash 'with no strings attached'

One of Ireland’s richest men tonight rejected long standing claims that Charles Haughey had accepted cash for favours.

Billionaire financier Dermot Desmond, who has admitted handing the former Taoiseach money, insisted hundreds of thousands of pounds was given with no strings attached.

At the same time another business tycoon, Ben Dunne, who admitted giving Mr Haughey €1.3m, said he accepted some of the responsibility for the shame heaped on the politician in his final years.

In all Mr Haughey received around €2m euro from the pair.

“I met Charlie Haughey in the mid 1980s and over 20 years I have known Charlie Haughey I have never seen or heard him do anything that is corrupt,” Mr Desmond said.

“This is the key question – Are you aware of any corrupt act that Charlie Haughey did? I’m not aware of it.”

Mr Desmond, who has been unapologetic for giving Mr Haughey a financial helping hand, described him as the father of the Celtic Tiger doing more for the economy than any other leader.

“I’m very sad. I thought he was a great man, and great men are hard to find. And Charlie Haughey to me did more to restore Ireland’s economic health than any other Taoiseach that we had,” he told RTE Radio.

“He started the miracle of the Irish economic miracle and rightly I feel he was the father of the Celtic Tiger.”

Entrepreneur Dunne, whose fall from the family business after being arrested on drugs charges in Miami led to revelations of payments to politicians, said Mr Haughey would be remembered for the pluses in his life, not the minuses.

“Some historians will find negatives all the time, but on balance I think the vast majority will look and think, and that Charlie Haughey will come out with more pluses than minuses,” he said.

It was Mr Dunne’s humiliating exit from his family business in 1992 after a night of cocaine and call-girls in Miami that led to revelations of unusual payments to politicians, and ultimately implicated Mr Haughey.

In all, Dunne made donations of over €1.3m euro to him.

The Moriarty Tribunal has identified payments totalling IR£8.5m that appear to have been made to Mr Haughey between 1979 and 1996.

The supermarket boss accepted that he shared some of the responsibility for the derision and ignominy that Mr Haughey faced in his final years as he fought allegations of corruption at the Moriarty Tribunal.

“What I am certainly sure of is that I caused him some hurt and that hurts me,” he said.

In a candid interview and not wishing to dwell on the controversy, Dunne said his thoughts and prayers were with the Haughey family and expressed his hurt at losing a friendship.

Mr Dunne said he admired Mr Haughey and would remember him as a man full of life.

“The Charlie Haughey that I remember was a man full of life and he had a fantastic brain and I have always said that I admired him because I think he could read the future extraordinarily clearly and well in lots of areas,” he said.

“And he had a huge knowledge over a wide range of subjects and that was impressive to me.”

The investigations into cash for politicians uncovered a spaghetti junction of payments and ultimately led to the uncovering of the Ansbacher tax dodging scam.

Mr Haughey lost around €600,000 following investigations into that and eventually made a tax settlement with the Revenue for over €5m.