Tribunal bids to unravel tangled web of payments
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was Finance Minister from 1991 to 1994 and while still relatively young he was widely tipped as the country’s next leader.
Despite his high-profile role Mr Ahern, a trained accountant, accepted cash loans and gifts from businessmen – benefits he insists were not wrong.
This tangled web of payments is being examined by the Mahon Tribunal into planning corruption following allegations that Cork-based developer Owen O’Callaghan bribed Mr Ahern with IR£80,000.
Here is a look back at the key dates in the complex money trail going back more than ten years.
:: December 27 1993: Mr Ahern gets IR£22,500 – IR£15,000 in cash – after a whip-round by friends to settle legal bills after his marriage breaks up. It is lodged to an Allied Irish Bank Special Savings scheme three days later.
:: April 1994: Almost IR£30,000 – part of IR£50,000 he saved during the previous seven years when he was separating from his ex-wife and had no bank account – is lodged to the AIB account.
:: August 1994: IR£20,000, thought to be the remainder of his cash savings, is lodged to a separate AIB account opened to pay for the education of Mr Ahern’s daughters.
:: October 1994: Around IR£24,800 – including IR£16,500 from a second whip-round, treated as a loan from friends, and £8,000Stg he got for speaking at a Manchester dinner – is lodged to AIB.
:: December 3 1994: Manchester businessman Michael Wall gives Mr Ahern a briefcase containing around £28,000 cash to refurbish the north Dublin house he rented from Mr Wall. The currency is disputed.
:: December 5 1994: IR£28,700 is lodged on Mr Ahern’s behalf to an AIB account on O’Connell St, Dublin held by his then partner Celia Larkin. He claims it was mostly Sterling.
:: December 5 1994: Ms Larkin lodges a separate IR£50,000 to an AIB account. It is thought to have been raised from the Special Savings scheme, the second whip-round and Manchester dinner money.
:: January 1995: Money lodged by Ms Larkin account is returned to Mr Ahern and kept in the safe in his constituency office, St Luke’s.
:: June 1995: IR£11,000 of this cash is lodged to AIB.
:: December 1995: Further cash from the safe, originally £20,000Stg, is lodged to AIB.
:: It would be ten years before the complex money trail became a controversial issue.
:: September 21 2006: Leaked tribunal documents are published alleging questions remain unanswered about Mr Ahern’s finances and detailing sums of IR£50,000.
:: September 26 2006: Mr Ahern gives an emotional television interview discussing the payments and insisting they are above board.
:: May 4 2007: A General Election is less than a month away and intense pressure mounts on the Government, and Mr Ahern, over his financial affairs and derails his Fianna Fail party’s manifesto launch.
:: May 13 2007: Mr Ahern issues a detailed and lengthy statement about his finances insisting he has done ’nothing wrong’ financially, refuting allegations of corruption or bribery.
:: May 28 2007: The Tribunal publishes a revised opening regarding Mr Ahern’s finances involving payments totalling around IR£170,000 over two years.
:: September 11 2007: Businessman Mr Wall says he gave Mr Ahern a briefcase stuffed with around £28,000 cash in his Dublin constituency office in 1994.
:: September 11 2007: An AIB foreign exchange expert tells the tribunal the original sum of cash could not have been Sterling, according to the bank’s record of transactions.
:: September 12 2007: Mr Ahern’s former partner, stylist Celia Larkin, is grilled about the 1994 lodgements with tribunal lawyers claiming she has changed her story.
