Ahern pal earned £0.25m from State purchase
A CLOSE friend of the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern made an estimated £250,000 when the State bought the historic Battle of the Boyne site last year, the Sunday
A CLOSE friend of the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern made an estimated £250,000 when the State bought the historic Battle of the Boyne site last year, the Sunday Independent can reveal.
The Flood tribunal is investigating the purchase which also netted one of the country's most prominent business families, the McCanns of Fyffes, a £5m profit in two years.
Two senior figures in the Taoiseach's Department have just made statements to the Flood tribunal in relation to the deal.
The tribunal's inquiries, which began three weeks ago, have also reached into other powerful State institutions, including the Departments of Foreign Affairs, Finance, the Environment and the OPW.
The two men in the Taoiseach's Department who have given statements are Mr Ahern's special adviser Martin Mansergh and the Department's Secretary General Dermot Gallagher. Neither was available for comment.
The Taoiseach's friend who gained from the deal, Tim Collins a trustee of Mr Ahern's constituency office in Drumcondra has also been asked to provide an affidavit.
He will do so next week, as will his business partner, Liam Moran, a property advisor and solicitor from Swords, Co Dublin.
Sources close to Mr Ahern are adamant that the purchase last year for £7.75m of the 503-acre Oldbridge Estate near Drogheda, in Co Louth, is "entirely above board". These sources are linking it to commitments made during the Good Friday Agreement negotiations.
The McCanns sold the site to the State last year, making a £5m profit two years after buying it for £2.7m. Mr Collins and Mr Moran were advisers to the McCann family.
The tribunal has given the McCanns a week's extension, until Friday, to provide an affidavit which, it has been told, should contain details of all financial donations it made to political parties and individual politicians from 1997 to 2001.
A spokeswoman for the McCann family yesterday said: "We have no concern whatsoever about any inquiry anyone might choose to make in relation to that transaction or the circumstances surrounding it."
Mr Collins, Mr Moran and Mr Neil McCann were also involved in the acquisition of Airlee Stud in Lucan some years ago. This is also being investigated by the Flood tribunal.
The Smurfit family, also feature in the Boyne investigation (apparently on a peripheral level), as do the Maktoums, the horse racing royal Arab family. And a role played by the Church of Ireland Archbishop and Primate, Dr Robin Eames, in negotiations leading up to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, may also emerge.
A previous attempt to develop the site, involving former FF TD Liam Lawlor, political lobbyist Frank Dunlop and a 66-year-old convicted fraudster and thief from Malaysia is also being examined.
Several unsuccessful attempts have been made since the late Eighties to develop the isolated Battle of the Boyne site. One such attempt was made by Lorrain Osman, the London-based former executive chairman of the Bank of Bumiputra.
Mr Osman, a Chinese Malaysian, spent nine years is prison in London and Hong Kong after being accused of 39 counts of fraud and theft following the loss of $1,000m from the Hong Kong branch of the Bank of Bumiputra in what became known as the Carrian Investments scam.
He is reported to have enlisted the services of Liam Lawlor and Frank Dunlop. Mr Osman had a £2.5m option to acquire the site from Oldbridge Estate, the firm which owned the land.
Mr Osman's plans failed to materialise. But the Flood tribunal is investigating Mr Lawlor and Mr Dunlop's role in it as part of their investigation into the Irish Consortium, a Prague entity associated with both men.
Liam Lawlor has already told the Flood tribunal that the Irish Consortium was funded by Ambrose Kelly Eastern Europe Ltd. Tim Collins was an investor in that company.
Some time in mid-1997 Mr Collins and Mr Moran became interested in the Battle of the Boyne site. It is understood they will say the site was brought to their attention by estate agents Keane O'Mahony Smith.
Both men will also tell the tribunal that they met separately with representatives of Michael Smurfit's K Club and the Maktoum family, both of whom had expressed a possible interest in the site. These negotiations came to nothing.
Mr Collins and Mr Moran will also say they have had a business relationship with the McCann family for almost seven years, identifying around 25 properties for them for sale-on.
A company called Deepriver Limited was incorporated on October 8, 1997, with the sole intention of buying the Boyne site. Deepriver purchased the site on November 18, 1997.
Deepriver is a subsidiary of the Balkan Investment Company. The ultimate holding company is Burgundy Investments.
The directors of Balkan and Burgundy are Neil McCann and his wife Mary, of Castlebellingham, Co Louth. Other directors are David McCann, Carl McCann and Philip Halpenny, the secretary of Fyffes plc.
Less than two months after the McCanns acquired the site, in January 1998, the then Minister for Foreign Affairs David Andrews issued a statement calling for "Boyne site proposals".
In December 1999, the Taoiseach announced that the Government intended to acquire the site as a gesture of reconciliation to the Unionist tradition.
At some stage after the McCanns had acquired the site in 1997 it is not entirely clear when Mr Moran wrote to the Dept of the Environment offering to sell to the State.
Negotiations eventually resulted in the State buying the site in August 2000 for £7.75m, a profit of £5m in two years for the McCanns.
For their part in the deal, Mr Moran and Mr Collins are understood to have received £500,000.
- EXCLUSIVE: JODY CORCORAN Political Editor
