Corrupt company's link to Sinn Fein $375,000 fundraiser
Sunday November 19 2006
AN EX-PAT founder of a corrupt US building firm has emerged as the main organiser of a fundraising event in New York two weeks ago which raised $375,000 for Sinn Fein, the Sunday Independent can reveal.
The fundraising dinner, hosted by Friends of Sinn Fein, was the first such event attended by Gerry Adams since a ban on him raising money in the US was lifted.
The ban was imposed after the IRA murder of Robert McCartney last January and the £26m Northern Bank raid in December 2005, also carried out by the IRA.
The murderers of Mr McCartney remain at large and the Northern Bank raid, while under active investigation, is still unsolved.
Notwithstanding this, about 750 people, paying $500 a plate, attended the Sinn Fein fundraising event at the Sheraton Hotel on November 9, raising about $375,000 for the party.
In Ireland, where many of the major US technology companies are based, Sinn Fein wants to return Capital Gains Tax of 40 per cent from the present level of 12.5 per cent, a move which economic experts warn would do long-term damage to the economy. It also wants to return employer's PRSI to 12 per cent. At present it ranges from 8.5 per cent to 10.75 per cent.
One of the main organisers of the Sinn Fein fundraising event in Manhattan was Pat Donaghy, the founder of New York's third-largest construction firm, Structure Tone, which has revenues of close to €2bn.
"A lot of those attending were there at his invitation," a well-placed source told the Sunday Independent.
Mr Donaghy, originally from Co Tyrone, who emigrated to New York in the late Fifties, is a major financial backer of Sinn Fein. He sold tables for this month's event to many of the companies which do business with his firm. His niece, Pauline Quinn, an IRA member, served time in Maghaberry prison in the North.
Structure Tone formed a central part of a five-year corruption investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney.
The District Attorney found that consultants, brokers, architects and contractors conspired throughout the Nineties to rig bidding for work carried out at some of New York's best-known companies, such as the Sony Corporation, Credit Suisse First Boston, Morgan Stanley, Bertelsmann AG and Gleacher & Company.
In 1998, in a plea bargain, Structure Tone pleaded guilty to paying a bribe to obtain a $500m contract at the Sony Building at Madison Avenue and 56th Street, according to an article published in the New York Times in 1998.
According to investigators, Structure Tone paid about $2.3m in kickbacks while it worked at the Sony building in the early Nineties. It was one of five construction companies that admitted they participated in a scheme to rig bidding on $2bn worth of renovation work.
Structure Tone pleaded guilty to commercial bribery and agreed to pay $10m in lieu of fines and forfeiture of assets. Hours after pleading guilty, the company issued a statement saying it was a "victim" of the bid-rigging scheme and had merely paid "legitimate sales commissions", a claim that incensed the prosecutors.
Political parties here, particularly Fianna Fail, will seize on today's disclosure should Sinn Fein attempt to make further capital out the main government party's links to property developers in advance of the general election.
Sinn Fein President, Gerry Adams spoke at this month's dinner in the Sheraton Hotel. Last year he was forced to address it via a satellite link from Dublin.
It is thought Mitchell Reiss, the US special envoy to Northern Ireland, recommended the ban be lifted despite Sinn Fein's refusal to back the Police Service of Northern Ireland. The lifting of the ban came as Sinn Fein gave conditional support to the timetable for devolution laid out by the Irish and British governments in the St Andrews Agreement.
Last year President Bush delivered a humiliating rebuff to Gerry Adams by inviting the victims of IRA violence to the White House for St Patrick's Day.
The Sinn Fein leader had been hoping for a face-to-face meeting with Mr Bush. Instead, Mr Bush asked the family of Robert McCartney to an intimate gathering where they met the President, Peter Hain, the Northern Secretary, and the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. This year he invited the McCartneys and the family of Joseph Rafferty.
