Mahon tribunal:Developer Tom Gilmartin got a call from an anonymous banker in Bank of Ireland, Jersey, who told him Taoiseach Bertie Ahern had money in offshore accounts, the tribunal was told yesterday.
Mr Gilmartin said that the banker, who had an educated Irish accent, also told him that Albert Reynolds operated offshore accounts.
He said he received two calls from the banker in 2002 and on the second occasion he was told that Mr Ahern had £15 million in offshore accounts, which had been channelled through AIB in O'Connell Street. He redialled the number when the call ended and had been put through to Bank of Ireland in Jersey, he said.
He said he contacted Patrick Hanratty, a barrister who had worked for the tribunal, and told him about the calls shortly after he had received them.
Counsel for businessman Owen O'Callaghan, Paul Sreenan SC, asked him why he did not tell Mr Hanratty, when he had contacted him, that the call was from Bank of Ireland, Jersey.
"It was irrelevant; it was a voice at the end of the phone and I wasn't quite sure what the set-up was," he said.
Mr Gilmartin said he had heard about Irish money going to offshore accounts long before he began doing business in Ireland.
He told the tribunal he had been at a function in 1985 in a hotel in London with bankers, including one from Jersey and one from South Africa, and they had told him money was filtered out of Ireland into offshore accounts "when Ireland was on its arse".
He claimed that Fianna Fáil was £3 million in debt because the money was being pocketed.
Mr Sreenan questioned him about information he gave in relation to money missing from a fund-raising trip to America.
Mr Gilmartin had told the tribunal in November 1999 that Albert Reynolds raised over $1 million in America after the "euphoria of the NI settlement". He had visited cities including Chicago, Boston and New York, but only brought back $70,000 to Fianna Fáil. The rest of the money was lodged to the Dutch Antilles and Lichtenstein, he said.
"One of the statements made to me [ was that] they must have fallen off the plane on the way over and drifted down to the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands," Mr Gilmartin said.
Mr Sreenan pressed him about his source for the information.
Mr Gilmartin said he was told by a number of people, including relations in America, one of whom worked for CNN. He said people had been monitoring the fund-raising because they were "tired of the Irish arriving with their begging bowl".
He was reluctant to reveal the names of his relations because, he said, when he had given names in the past, other "decent people" who could have backed up his evidence had received calls from the late Liam Lawlor, on behalf of Mr O'Callaghan, and had been threatened. The chairman ordered that Mr Gilmartin write down the name of his relations.
Mr Sreenan accused Mr Gilmartin of picking up "snippets of information" and getting them scrambled in his mind.
In evidence to the tribunal yesterday afternoon, former Fianna Fáil press secretary Frank Dunlop acknowledged that he had ready access to government ministers from all backgrounds.
When questioned by tribunal counsel Patricia Dillon SC he also acknowledged that, before becoming involved in the Quarryvale project, he knew Mr Gilmartin was unlikely to be a man who would get involved in corruption. He told the tribunal that he wrote to Mr Gilmartin offering his services on the advice of the late Liam Lawlor in 1989.
Mr Gilmartin did not engage him and he subsequently was engaged by John Corcoran. Mr Corcoran was the developer behind Blanchardstown Shopping Centre.
Mr Dunlop said he ceased working for Mr Corcoran in mid-1990 and that subsequently the developer made a contribution to the late Brian Lenihan's presidential campaign.
He said he was later told by Mr Lawlor, who got the information from Ray Burke, that Brian Lenihan "made overtures" to the then taoiseach, Charles Haughey, to grant tax designation to the Blanchardstown development.
Mr Haughey said "Brian, not today, not tomorrow, not expletive ever", Mr Dunlop said.
