Funding chief used as 'cover' for Ahern gift
Padraic O'Connor, the former managing director of NCB Stockbrokers, arrives at Dublin Castle yesterday to give evidence to the Mahon Tribunal
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FIANNA Fail's former chief fundraiser, Des Richardson, was used as a conduit for a payment of IR£5,000 to Taoiseach Bertie Ahern by NCB stockbrokers, its former managing director said yesterday.
The use of Mr Richardson was to preserve the identity of the real recipient of the donation, the first political donation the stockbroking firm had ever made.
Yesterday former NCB boss Padraic O'Connor admitted that a bogus invoice was used to generate the paperwork to cover the payment to the Taoiseach, although he always believed the IR£5,000 was for Mr Ahern's constituency and not for him personally.
He saw the money as a "once off" but to preserve confidentiality the cheque was not to be made payable directly to Mr Ahern.
"This was not something that we wanted trumpeted about or to get into the public domain," Mr O'Connor told the Mahon Tribunal.
Mr O'Connor, who was the managing director of NCB from 1991 to 1999, said he was not a personal friend of Mr Ahern or of Des Richardson, who had first approached him about a payment in December 1993.
He said that he did not agree with Mr Ahern's version of events relating to the IR£5,000 bank draft, which Mr Ahern believed was a personal donation.
Support
Mr Ahern has already told the tribunal he based this belief on support NCB had given the annual O'Donovan Rossa Cuman dinner. The company had no difficulty in writing a cheque for the dinner, and because the IR£5,000 had come as a bank draft he believed it was a personal donation.
And the Taoiseach's claim that he (Mr Ahern) had personally thanked him in January 1994 for the donation "never happened", Mr O'Connor said.
Mr O'Connor said he knew Mr Richardson because his barber and Mr Richardson were married to sisters. "I had met him three or four times in the barber shop, where I have been going for 20 years. It was a "trivial" connection, he added.
When Mr Richardson rang him he thought it might be in relation to some corporate finance business, but he discovered very quickly that Mr Richardson was on a fund raising mission.
Mr Richardson told him that Mr Ahern had recently become the national treasurer of Fianna Fail and because of this he did not expect to be in a position to carry out fund raising for his own constituency.
He was sure that the funds were to be for the constituency and not the Fianna Fail party or Mr Ahern personally.
Having decided to make the donation, discretion and confidentiality was the objective, but he was unclear on the mechanism used.
"We don't like doing it. We wanted to do it discreetly. We were using Des Richardson as the conduit because he was the guy who approached us."
Mr O'Connor said NCB did not get an acknowledgement from the constituency office for the donation, but as this was the first time they had donated they didn't know whether this was normal or not.
He said when he saw the invoice from Euro Workforce Ltd for IR£6,050 (IR£5,000 plus IR£1,050 Vat) he was 99pc certain this must have been the way the IR£5,000 was paid to Mr Ahern's constituency.
Mr O'Connor said the company was not "layering the donation with secrecy" by raising an invoice, even though it meant an additional cost of IR£1,050 to NCB.
- Lorna Reid and Senan Molony
