THE Government is blocking Mr John Furze, the man linked to payments of £1.1 million by Mr Ben Dunne, from operating an insurance company in the International Financial Services Centre in Dublin.
Mr Furze, the Cayman Islands banker associated with Dublin merchant bank Guinness and Mahon, is named as a proposed director of Western International Life Insurance (Europe). It lodged an application with the Department of Employment and Enterprise recently seeking authorisation to operate in the IFSC.
Department sources have established that this is the same Mr Furze whose name has been linked to the Dunnes Stores payments-to-politicians controversy.
The Minister of State for Commerce, Mr Pat Rabbitte, who has responsibility for such authorisations in the IFSC, confirmed to The Irish Times that Western International applied for authorisation. He refused to say if he had approved the application.
Sources have indicated, however, that the Government is not disposed towards approving the application if it includes Mr Furze as a director while the inquiry into payments to politicians was under way.
A Mr John Furze is named in the court affidavit drawn up by Mr Ben Dunne as part of his legal action, later settled, against the Dunne family.
Mr Dunne alleged, in the affidavit, that he had made payments of £1.1 million into London bank accounts, the bulk of which were opened in the name of "John Furze" in the early 1990s. The affidavit is also understood to allege that the ultimate beneficiary of this money was a Fianna Fail politician.
Mr Furze, in an interview with The Irish Times last December, said he did not hold money in bank accounts on behalf of other people.
