The former property developer, Patrick Gallagher, has died at the age of 54 following a short illness.
He was the former head of the Gallagher property and banking group which collapsed in the early 1980s.
At the age of 22, he took over his father's property empire in 1974 and became one of Ireland's best known property speculators.
He made £2 million in 1979 by buying and then selling the same property back on St Stephen's Green in Dublin within months.
In the early 1990s he served a jail sentence in Northern Ireland after being charged with fraud arising out of his dealings on behalf of the Northern Ireland arm of one of the Gallagher group companies, Merchant Banking Ltd.
On his release he moved to South Africa but his affairs were to resurface at the Moriarty Tribunal in 1999 when it emerged that 20 years before, he had loaned former Taoiseach Charles Haughey £300,000.
He told the tribunal he had done so out of a sense of duty.
Mr Gallagher's funeral takes place tomorrow.
