Thu, Dec 21, 2006 page6

• Former PM corrupt: Irish tribunal

  • THE GUARDIAN
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  During his lifetime, former Irish prime minister Charlie Haughey, nicknamed "The Boss," evaded his accusers.

  On Tuesday, the extent of the corrupt cash for favors culture operated by Haughey was exposed in excruciating detail.

  After nine years of investigation, an official tribunal revealed that the long-serving Fianna Fail party leader, who died earlier this year at the age of 80, "misappropriated" funds raised for a ministerial colleague's liver transplant, sold passports to an Arab sheikh, and accumulated the equivalent of 11 million euros (US$14.5 million) in clandestine payments from wealthy businessmen.

  The inquiry, which covered the highest levels of government in Dublin, found that Haughey had "devalued the quality of a modern democracy."

  The reputation of the present Prime Minister Bertie Ahern was also tarnished by confirmation that it was his practice to sign blank checks later used by Haughey for his personal benefit.

  In September Ahern had to go on national television to apologize for not disclosing cash donations given by friends at the time of his divorce.

  The findings of the tribunal have been eagerly anticipated after bruising cross-examinations in public sessions of many leading political and business figures. Mysterious financial trails, threaded through offshore bank accounts, have been pursued in painstaking detail.

  Haughey's fondness for fine clothes, especially ?700 (US$1,380) Charvet shirts from Paris and expensive dinners, were legendary. He owned racehorses and a yacht named Celtic Mist, in which he sailed out to Inishvickillane, an island off County Kerry that he had purchased. He owned a large Georgian mansion, Abbeville, in north County Dublin, and kept a Dublin gossip columnist as a mistress.

  Haughey quit in 1992 after leading his party for 13 years. His behavior was condemned by the tribunal's chairman, the Belfast-born Justice Michael Moriarty.

  "Apart from the ... secretive nature of payments from senior members of the business community, their very incidence and scale, particularly during difficult economic times nationally and when governments led by Haughey were championing austerity, can only be said to have devalued the quality of a modern democracy," his report stated.

  Haughey's evidence, given to the tribunal before he died, that payments were made by "disinterested citizens seeking to assist a politician whose views they supported," was roundly rejected.

  "During ... those years [in office], Haughey, while generating relatively modest earnings, lived a conspicuously lavish lifestyle," the report noted.

  Of money raised for the treatment of Brian Lenihan, a former ministerial ally who required a liver transplant, the tribunal said it had no doubt remaining that some of it had disappeared into Haughey's pockets.

  "The tribunal is satisfied that Haughey alone knew what was collected for the benefit of Lenihan, and by whom it was contributed," it said.

  "The tribunal has established that as much as ?265,000 may have been collected for that purpose, and that of those funds, no more than ?70,283 was applied in meeting the costs and expenses attendant on Lenihan's medical treatment in the US," it said.

  "The tribunal is satisfied that a sizeable proportion of the excess funds collected was misappropriated by Haughey for his personal use," it said.
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