Haughey's Forty Years of Controversy (36 page)

Terry Keane was certainly proud of her love affair with Haughey – the 27 years of which she went on to detail in a series of articles in the
Sunday Times
. Those included a photograph of them kissing while she was stretched out on the floor. That photograph dispelled any lingering doubts about the truth of the affair. But she was taken aback by the intensity of the public reaction to her articles.

‘I certainly was surprised by the fallout after the first extract from them,' she said. ‘Perhaps naively I didn't expect such a shock wave of reaction.'

For a while, she tried to defend him, especially in relation to money. All Ben Dunne got for the million pounds plus that he gave to Charlie Haughey was an invitation to a few parties at Abbeville and some family weddings, she told Marian Finucane in an RTÉ interview. ‘If anybody is foolish enough to give a million pounds to be included in someone's social circle, that's up to them.'

Anybody who thinks that they could buy favours from Haughey does not know the man. ‘They don't understand Charlie's character,' she said. ‘Charlie would think the million pounds was his by right'. As was mentioned earlier, she added that ‘it would be like the three wise men putting gold, frankincense and myrrh in front of the Saviour and that he would have no obligation because of a gift.' Ben Dunne continued to assert that he never got nor sought any favours. The Moriarty tribunal uncovered further cheques totalling £180,000 that Dunne gave to Haughey in November 1992. This was after Haughey had lost his political clout. In fact, he had actually quit politics, so those cheques would tend to support Dunne's contention that he was not looking for political favours. Ben even offered later still to provide the further million that Haughey would need to cover his tax liabilities if he came clean about the money Dunne had given him.

Between 1987 and 1997, when the story of the Dunne money first broke, Haughey spent a lot more money than he earned. Just where he got all the money is still not clear. The Ansbacher accounts controlled by Des Traynor, which the McCracken tribunal suspected might contain up to £40 million, were actually much more extensive. In all, there were about a hundred different Irish residents involved in those accounts and the total money ran into the hundreds of millions of pounds. Despite reckless remarks by some politicians suggesting that all those people involved were criminal tax evaders, a number of those accounts were perfectly legal and being used for legitimate business reasons.

In the midst of the further Ansbacher disclosures in September 1999, Terry Keane was back in the news when she auctioned off some paintings of Haughey and other memorabilia of their affair. News of the items to be auctioned first broke as the lead story on the front page of
The Examiner
on what was – unknown to the editorial staff – the eve of the Haughey's forty-eighth wedding anniversary. The unseemly timing of the hurtful gesture seemed like a confirmation of the lines of William Congreve:

Heav'n has no rage, like love to hatred turn'd

Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd.

The Moriarty tribunal uncovered other cheques that Ben Dunne diverted to Haughey, bringing the total of his contributions to £1.9m, but there was still no suggestion that Dunne had obtained any improper favour from Haughey, or the government.

A whole plethora of issues about his financial affairs were raised by the Moriarty tribunal, particularly in relation to Charlie's handling of money contributed to Fianna Fáil and his use of the party leader's fund, especially in relation to the money contributed towards Brian Lenihan lifesaving operation. Questions were also raised about propriety of using the leader's fund to pay for either Charlie's household bills, or his Charvet shirts, or using £26,000 to help Deputy John Ellis stave off bankruptcy, because if he was declared bankrupt, he would have to vacate his Dáil seat and the government would lose its majority. The National Irish Bank was even persuaded to write off a debt of £263,540 owed by Ellis about the same time.

There can be no real doubt that Haughey misappropriated the £100,000 given to Fianna Fáil by Irish Permanent Building Society in 1986, or that there was a vast surplus in the money contributed for Lenihan's liver transplant, or that a substantial amount of the £160,000 handed over by Mark Kavanagh and Michael Smurfit for Fianna Fáil in 1989 was allegedly misappropriated.

Rather than answered the various questions, however, Haughey appeared to prevaricate and even tried to frustrate the investigation. He challenged the right of Moriarty tribunal to investigate his bank accounts and those of wife, daughter, and two sisters on constitutional grounds. In April 1998 the high court held that the failure to give members of his family advance notice of the discovery orders executed on their accounts was unfair, but not sufficient to void the proceedings of the tribunal. On the other hand, the court ruled that Haughey's own complaints against the tribunal itself were ‘bordering on the absurd'. The judge, Hugh Geoghegan concluded that ‘some invasion of Mr Haughey's constitutional rights, such as his right of privacy et cetera, is justified having regard to the legitimate public concern,' because of valid questions were raised by his acceptance of gifts.

‘Ethical behaviour in public office surely incorporates more than simply refusing to take bribes,' the judge contended. An office-holder was obliged to behave in a way that did not give rise to a public apprehension or inference of impropriety. In Geoghegan's judgment, there was already evidence that Charlie's conduct had given rise to such apprehension by accepting the money from Ben Dunne. The judge concurred with the conclusion of his colleague Brian McCracken that ‘Haughey's whole life style' would appear to have been ‘dependent upon such gifts.'

Geoghegan ruled that Haughey had to pay half the cost of the high court hearing. The former Taoiseach appealed this to the supreme court but lost in 1999. As a result, he was saddled not only with half the high court costs, but also the whole cost of the supreme court hearing. It was estimated that those costs could run as high as £500,000. This was only part of his growing financial problems. The revenue commissioners had lodged an appeal in the circuit court against the verdict of the appeals commissioner in dismissing the £2 million tax assessment against Haughey, but this was eventually settled out of court in April 2000 when Charlie agreed to pay £1,009,435 in tax arrears and interest on the money given by Dunne. Of course, this was only an interim settlement as the Moriarty tribunal had uncovered other monies given or appropriated by Haughey. He had little trouble paying the money, because of the explosion in property prices around Dublin. He was offered £5m for just 10 acres of Kinsealy. In August 2003 he sold the remainder of the property to Manor Park home builders, controlled by Joe Moran for around a reported 45 million euro. He had, in fact, become a fabulously wealthy man, but now in his twilight years, he was being hounded by his past.

The director of public prosecutions directed that Charlie should be charged with obstructing the McCracken tribunal. If convicted, he could have been fined £10,000 and sentenced to two years in jail. When he was due to make his first appearance in court on 14 October 1999, members of the Socialist Worker's party staged a virtual circus outside the courthouse, parading around with different placards reading:

Jail the Corrupt Politicians

Make Haughey Pay his Tax

Jail the Ansbacher Crooks

Although there were rarely more than a couple of dozen protesters, they made an enormous amount of noise with their rhythmic chants backed up with a loud hailer:

Charvet Charlie what's the score?

One law for the rich, one law for the poor!

Charlie Haughey what's the crack?

We want the shirt off your back.

Your island, your yacht, your shirt, you're caught!

Haughey had given the media the slip at the McCracken tribunal by going into Dublin Castle a couple of hours before the proceedings were due to begin. This time the media were not about to be deceived – they had television cameras covering all the entrances to the Four Courts from 7 a.m., even though the proceedings were not due to begin until 9.30. At about 9.10 Conor Haughey, Charlie's eldest son arrived, and told the photographers that his father was inside already.

‘How did he get in?' one asked.

‘He just got up before you.'

As the photographers followed him into the yard of the Four Courts a blue Mercedes drove up quickly behind them, a garda opened the door of court, and Haughey dashed in before the photographers could get any shots. They were disgusted as they were now going to be the butt of complaints from colleagues covering the other entrances.

‘This could not happen in England,' a disappointed TV3 cameraman complained. ‘They would never open the court early to suit somebody charged with a criminal offence.'

It was widely rumoured that Charlie would plead guilty as the evidence against him was overwhelming, but that was never his way. His trial was set from March 2000, but a series of events conspired to postpone it. When Jack Lynch died in October 1999, Haughey attended the funeral in Cork. It was the last great Irish political funeral of the twentieth century. In symbolic terms it differs enormously from the first great political funeral of the century, that of Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa on 1 August 1915. That turned into a clarion call to arms when Patrick Pearse delivered the funeral oration. ‘The fools, the fools, the fools,' he said, ‘they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.' Pearse used that occasion as an opportunity to establish himself as a spokesman for militant Irish Nationalism, and he then used that platform to lead the Easter Rebellion less than a year later. Lynch, on the other hand, was celebrated as the man who blocked another call to arms in Northern Ireland in 1970. ‘For that alone Jack Lynch deserves his place in history', Des O'Malley declared in his funeral oration.

Listening to people in Cork one sensed that Jack Lynch was already on the road to canonisation. Indeed, some seemed ready to suggest that he performed his first miracle by getting Charlie Haughey, Des O'Malley and Albert Reynolds to sit together in the church during the funeral mass. The text of O'Malley's graveside oration was already being circulated. ‘The safe existence of this democratic state in which we live today is very much Jack Lynch's political legacy,' he would say. ‘We could have caved into sinister elements and put our country at mortal risk.' Reporters reading those comments in advance were certainly convinced that this was an attack on Haughey, who attracted more attention than the Taoiseach outside the church. For years, Haughey has enjoyed the kind of celebrity status that tends to upstage a bride at a wedding or a corpse at a funeral. Now that celebrity was tarnished by a notoriety that became apparent in a sense of ridicule. People were openly joking about his shirt. Some cheered Haughey, while others jeered, but it was neither the time nor the place for such demonstrations. Most people remained respectfully silent.

Haughey had the guts to pay his respects in hostile circumstances. It was, in a way, reminiscent of that day in December 1979 when he sat alone on the government benches and taunted his tormentors by listening to their invective in silence. He did not go to the graveside, but one sensed that he still had a pervasive presence, because of Des O'Malley's graveside oration.

There had already been considerable publicity surrounding the proceedings at the Moriarty tribunal, where it had been disclosed that Haughey had received or appropriated over £8.5m in contributions over a 17-year period.

Charlie's lawyers again argued that he could not receive a fair trial in the climate, and in June 2000 Judge Kevin Haugh agreed. He cited the publicity at the Moriarty tribunal, the campaign being waged by member of the Socialist Worker's party, and what he considered a prejudicial comment by the Tánaiste, Mary Harney. In an interview with the
Irish Independent,
she was asked if she thought that Charlie should be jailed as a result of the allegations made at the Moriarty tribunal.

‘I do, yes,' she replied. ‘He should be convicted.'

Her comments were certainly not contempt of court, because she was not talking about Charlie's conduct before the McCracken tribunal. She was referring to different matters but it all contributed to a poisonous climate in which a fair trial would be impossible, in the opinion of Judge Haugh. The director of public prosecutions appealed this decision to the high court, but it upheld the lower court's decision and suggested that the charges could be re-entered at a more suitable time.

In the next nine months, Charlie was called to testify before the Moriarty tribunal during three different periods. The first time was on 21 July 2000 when he spent two hours a day for five days on the witness stand. These shortened periods were in deference to his age and the disclosure that he had been suffering from prostate cancer for some years. He was back on the witness stand again on 21 September for eight further days, and the third period of examination began on 18 February 2001. It was confined to one hour a day for twenty days.

He was afforded the opportunity to refute all the allegations about the misappropriation of the money. He again tried to lay the responsibility for his financial affairs on Des Traynor. He argued that he had received ‘considerably less' than the £8.5m being cited by the Moriarty tribunal, but he declined to speculate on how much less. ‘I cannot say that because,' he contended, ‘these figures are so complex and extend over such a long period of time that in pursuance of my duty to the tribunal, I engaged the services of a very expert forensic accountant to help the tribunal in unravelling these figures and he, too, is of the opinion that the figure was exaggerated.'