Businessman Larry Goodman has again denied any involvement with offshore transactions in the Isle of Man in connection with a land deal in west Dublin.
It emerged yesterday that Mr Goodman gave the tribunal a new statement last week addressing a claim that, in spite of earlier denials, he was aware of the use of offshore funds in connection with the deal at Coolamber in west Dublin.
The claim was made last month by his former solicitor, Noel Smyth, who used an Isle of Man company, Mobberley Ltd, to hold Mr Goodman's money in connection with Coolamber. Mr Goodman engaged Mr Smyth in 1991 to recoup debts due after he funded the purchase of the land at the request of former TD Liam Lawlor.
In the statement, Mr Goodman says he was never aware of Mobberley or the deposit of funds in the Isle of Man. He had "no direct involvement" in the mechanism used to deposit his money in the account.
In his evidence yesterday, Mr Smyth said he accepted Mr Goodman may not have asked him the name of the company but he found it "difficult to accept" that he didn't know the money was in the Isle of Man.
He also said Mr Goodman's financial adviser, Seán Mooney, was aware that Mobberley was an Isle of Man company and that money had gone there. Mr Mooney had given him instructions to move funds from time to time. But he might not necessarily have told Mr Mooney the detail of Mobberley's business.
The file on Mobberley is not available to the tribunal because it has gone missing. Mr Smyth said a member of his staff gave Mr Lawlor the file for another company, Elangrove, in 1999. He believed this file probably contained the Mobberley records.
Mr Lawlor was told to copy the file and then return it, but this did not happen, the tribunal heard.
Mr Smyth said a staff member had released the file because Mr Lawlor was under pressure to provide documents to the tribunal and it was believed he was bringing the file to the inquiry. He should have approved the release of this file personally but this did not happen.
Mr Smyth said he could not explain why he had allowed himself to be "used" by Mr Lawlor, whom he described as "jumping into my firm and then out of it".
In 1997, writing on Mr Lawlor's behalf, he threatened to report solicitor John Caldwell to the Law Society unless the politician was given a share of the proceeds from the Coolamber deal.
