Tax expert:The Revenue Commissioners could begin a parallel investigation into Taoiseach Bertie Ahern's finances if his account to the tribunal is deemed to lack credibility, a leading tax lawyer has suggested.
Suzanne Kelly, a former president of the Irish Taxation Institute, said this was one reason why Mr Ahern would be keen to avoid leaving doubts over his version of events.
"The other point would be that if you don't confidently and credibly deliver a statement [ and it] makes the tribunal doubt you, you could end up with an obstruction charge, rather similar to what was attempted against Charles Haughey," she said.
" [ Mr Ahern] is continuously watching that he doesn't do anything that incurs the criminal wrath of the tribunal, he doesn't do anything that upsets his statement that he has privately made to the Revenue. And finally he will want to avoid any adverse finding. These are three things that he is watching very closely."
Last May, Mr Ahern told reporters that in the previous six months, he had made a payment to the Revenue Commissioners relating to the payments and gifts he received in the early 1990s.
He denied this was at odds with his statement in the Dáil last October that he had no tax liabilities on the money he had received. He said that his advice was that this was still the case and that he would be refunded most of the money he had given to the Revenue Commissioners.
Ms Kelly observed that the difficulties of tribunal witnesses in recalling details of their historic income and expenditure were similar to those faced by many people when dealing with the Revenue Commissioners.
"Those hazy memories had to be reactivated with thousands of people recently when we had a big arrears review [of historic taxes] under this Government, and I was often dealing with people of 80 years of age on oxygen machines, trying to remember what they did with certain amounts of money for tax purposes 25 years ago," she told RTÉ Radio.
"Ordinary people have had to experience the consequences of having past events reviewed."
Ms Kelly calculated that the buying power of the £30,000 stg given to Mr Ahern by Manchester businessman Michael Wall could equate to some €250,000 today.
The figure of £30,000 stg would be worth some €60,000 in current terms, but the buying power would be significantly greater.
"So if you had put that [ money] into a house, that house could now be worth half a million euro," she added.
