Moriarty Tribunal investigates payments into account linked to Haughey

The Moriarty Tribunal is investigating payments of over £300,000 from the property developer, John Byrne, into an account linked to Charles Haughey. The payments were made in 1987 and ended up in an Amiens account in Guinness and Mahon Bank. Earlier, the Tribunal heard Conor Haughey defend his role in Feltrim Mining, a public company which he established which later lost millions of pounds.

One payment into the account in 1987 was for £260,000. Mr Byrne is expected to say that this was to clear a loan in Guinnness & Mahon for the Mount Brandon Hotel in Tralee. However, the loan was in fact paid off two years earlier. This prompted Mr Justice Michael Moriarty to say that, if there had been some extraordinary computer virus that was refusing to recognise loans being paid off and continuing to generate interest, the bank would have noticed. Sandra Kells for Guinness and Mahon said that someone within the bank had to interfere with the records on this loan and generate new documents to make it reappear on their books. The second Amiens payment from John Byrne was in the name of Skellig Investments in 1987. The Tribunal heard that he would give evidence on this at a later date.

Earlier, the Tribunal heard Conor Haughey give evidence in relation to his role as Managing Director of a mining company. Mr Haughey, the son of the former Taoiseach, admitted that, were it not for the intervention of Dermot Desmond and American exploration company the company, Feltrim Mining would not have survived. Previously, the Tribunal heard that Feltrim Mining was set up to give Conor Haughey a job after he finished college. However, today Conor Haughey told the Tribunal that Feltrim was his concept, that he climbed mountains in Connemara, did all the preliminary work and had the whole concept for the company worked out. He said that, at the time, the late 80s, gold mining was the dot.com of the day.

Conor Haughey said that he never asked his father to contact the businessman Bernie Cahill and ask him to be Chairman of Feltrim Mining. He said that it was his own suggestion that Mr Cahill take up that position. Mr Haughey also denied that the company, which had been making a loss, "turned around" in 1993, the year Conor Haughey left his position as MD. He said that the company is still making a loss.

Mr Haughey was also asked about the family yacht, the Celtic Mist, which was imported from Majorca in 1988. He said that he knew nothing about the financing of the boat, nor could he offer any explanation as to why the name of a family friend, a Mr Stafford, was used to import the boat. He suggested that it was because Brian Stafford had skippered the vessel.