The Dublin West TD, Liam Lawlor, has told the Flood Tribunal that he probably cashed a cheque for £38,000 in a pub in Inchicore. He said that the publican, a good friend of his, would then have given him the cash over a few weeks. During intense questioning Mr Lawlor accepted that he had used fake invoices for two payments he got from the company National Toll Roads. Earlier the TD refused to give the tribunal details of his business interests in the Czech Republic. His lawyers threatened to take the matter to the High Court.
Yet again today, information that Liam Lawlor did not include in the two sworn affidavits he gave to the Tribunal has emerged in questioning. This includes the £38,000 payment from Frank Dunlop, ostensibly in return for consultancy work in the Czech Republic. That money was probably, according to Liam Lawlor cashed in the Sarsfield Bar in Inchicore. There is a company in, as Mr Lawlor put it, “Downtown London”, which he says may have been used to invoice that Dunlop payment.
There's another company based in Middle Abbey Street which Mr Lawlor said he was not directly involved in. Yet he used its headed notepaper to invoice two other payments that he described as “political donations” from the National Toll Roads company.
The Tribunal also heard about Advance Proteins Ltd, a company that never traded, yet £900,000 passed through its accounts. The bulk of this money was, according to Mr Lawlor, for a feasibility study that was eventually cancelled. All this is information that was not included in his affidavits to the Tribunal. There were gasps and laughter as Mr Lawlor detailed the extraordinary geographical range of his business interests, from Prague to Nigeria, Albania to Killybegs and on to Argentina.
The evidence of Deputy Lawlor was raised in the Dáil this morning, when Labour leader Ruairí Quinn asked that the Dáil re-affirm a statement issued by all party leaders in October, that every citizen had a legal, moral and democratic duty to comply with that Tribunal. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said that, provided it would not affect the Tribunal, the Dáil could vote to re-affirm that statement tomorrow.
