Former Irish PM received secret funds

Former Prime Minister Charles Haughey received more than $15 million in secret payments and lied about his knowledge of the funds, according to an official report released Tuesday into Ireland's biggest political scandal.

The 704-page dossier by a fact-finding tribunal detailed the clandestine finances of Haughey, who served four scandal-marred terms as premier from 1979 to 1992 _ then spent a decade battling probes into his mysterious wealth. Haughey, 80, died in June of prostate cancer.

Justice Michael Moriarty, who began investigating Haughey's financial empire in 1997, said the former prime minister's testimony had often been incredible and unbelievable. The judge said his report would have been released years ago had Haughey and his legal team not obstructed his efforts to identify the movement of Haughey's funds through third parties and offshore accounts.

Moriarty said Haughey's exploitation of his position to enrich himself was "unacceptable, wrong and must not be replicated."

The report provided a damning epitaph for Haughey, who rose to power in an Ireland burdened by double-digit unemployment and widespread poverty. While most politicians got by on a five-figure salary, Haughey solicited businessmen to fund a 280-acre estate, a private island and yacht, a helicopter business run by a son, and a jet-setting second life with a mistress.

Haughey received more than $15 million from more than two dozen sources, the investigation found.

The judge ruled that Haughey's most generous donor, department store baron Ben Dunne, received lobbying support from the prime minister in his company's successful battle to avoid paying a $64 million bill to Ireland's tax collection agency. Dunne admitted giving Haughey more than $2.6 million but denied getting anything but friendship in return.

Moriarty said Haughey received about $85,000 from a Saudi sheik in exchange for getting Irish passports for his relatives, although Haughey had claimed the money was for a racing horse he owned.

While Haughey entered office in 1979 owing Ireland's largest bank nearly $2 million, the judge noted most of the debt to was either paid by business friends or never repaid.

"Apart from the almost invariably 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 Mr. Haughey were championing austerity _ can only be said to have devalued the quality of a modern democracy," the report concluded.

Much public criticism focused on Haughey's decision to spend tens of thousands of dollars that he had raised to help his deputy prime minister, the late Brian Lenihan, cover medical bills for liver-transplant surgery.

The judge said Haughey's total "donations" from 1979 to 1996 represented 171 times the value of his prime ministerial salary and pension. He said the underground income would amount to about $60 million in today's prices.

Moriarty's probe, which has already cost taxpayers nearly $32.5 million, plans to release at least two more investigations next year into secret payments involving other Irish politicians and businessmen.

The current prime minister, Bertie Ahern, declined to comment on the report.

Ahern was a protege of Haughey in Fianna Fail, Ireland's long-dominant party. Ahern sought to distance himself from corrupt colleagues after he gained power in 1997 and, under opposition pressure, appointed Moriarty to investigate.

___

On the Net:

Moriarty report http://www.moriarty-tribunal.ie/images/sitecontent_26.pdf