14 November 2014
for instance, that Justice Moriarty had
£500,000 worth of shares in CRH that in
his opinion precluded him from investigat-
ing the company. Now it emerges eminent
progressive turned President of the High
Court, Declan Costello, who investigated the
bank’s Cayman operation as a High Court
inspector in 2000 had a domestic Ansbacher
(ie Guinness and Mahon) account though he
had ‘forgotten’ it when denying it to Ryan. He
resigned as inspector citing ill health, He
died in 2011.
Ansbacher bank became a household
name in Ireland from stories emerging from
the McCracken Tribunal in 1997 as it uncov-
ered a complex series of payments from
Ben Dunne to Charles Haughey that even-
tually landed in Ansbacher bank, formerly
the Cayman Islands branch of Guinness &
Mahon Bank. The accounts were run by
Haughey’s bagman Des Traynor and John
Furze, an English-born banker who ran the
Cayman Islands end of the venture. Furze’s
career was straight out of a John le Carré
novel. He was instrumental in establishing
the offshore banking system in the Cayman
Islands, arriving there in 1967 at the age
of 25. When his name was first mentioned
in the Irish Times in 1996, the paper wrote
that it considered Furze to be a fictitious
name. Another early Irish Times report on
the island referred to John Grisham’s novel
‘The Firm’ for context. Yet by 1996, Des
Traynor was already dead, and Furze had
travelled to Ireland for the funeral and to
remove paperwork from Traynor’s office at
T
HE vast sums accruing to the 1%
present at least one problem for the
most avaricious: how to hide their
money. With vast amounts of wealth invested
in property it may be the case that offshore
accounts, tax evasion and property bubbles
are not unconnected. The return to life of
the Ansbacher investigation into offshore
accounts held by senior Irish politicians
and businesspeople from the 1970s to the
mid-1990s reminds us how things used to
be done. Some might argue that little has
changed.
Under the new protected disclosure legis-
lation, serving civil servant Gerry Ryan, who
began investigating the Ansbacher accounts
in 1997, has contacted the Public Accounts
Committee to voice concerns that tax eva-
sion among high-ranking politicians with
offshore accounts was not properly inves-
tigated. Mary Lou McDonald said they
were “household names” from Fianna Fáil,
Fine Gael and the Progressive Democrats.
Responding to the disclosure, the govern-
ment said that the files had already been
forwarded to the “relevant authorities”
which apparently did not include the Gardaí,
as Minister Richard Bruton finally forwarded
the files to Gardaí on Monday 10 November.
Ansbacher was closely associated with CRH,
the giant Irish business which has connec-
tions across almost all political parties. In ‘A
History of Scandal’, (Village Oct/Nov 2012),
Michael Smith outlined a series of serious
instances of failure of the “relevant authori-
ties” to lay a finger on CRH; it materialised,
CRH. Furze died in July 1997 following heart
surgery and by that stage he had destroyed
much of the paperwork.
A full 200 customers of the bank were
identified in a 2002 report but no prosecu-
tions resulted. Revenue later cited a number
of reasons for not bringing prosecutions,
including the lack of original documentation,
an inability to compel Cayman Island entities
to release documents, and the elapse of more
than 10 years in bringing cases. Despite the
criminal-law inertia, by the end of 2012
the Revenue Commissioners had recovered
more than €112 million in unpaid taxes and
penalties, (an Irish solution to a Cayman
Islands problem) but now it appears other
names have been identified and efforts by
Gerry Ryan to recover documents that may
have aided a prosecution were stymied.
The return of Ansbacher reminds us
of the scale of tax evasion and tax avoid-
ance on a personal and corporate scale.
The recent ‘Lux:eaks’ story involves
PriceWaterhouseCooper, several of the
world’s biggest corporations, and the now
European Commission President Jean-
Claude Juncker, who was Prime Minister in
Luxembourg for much of the relevant period
from 2008 to 2010, and after a short period
in apparent hiding he has now emerged to
“take responsibility” for the “unethical” pol-
icy, and possibly spear Ireland’s Corporation
Tax policy. Interestingly, when the story
broke, the Cayman Compass news website
promptly issued an editorial in support of
Juncker.
Documents obtained by the International
Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ)
and released in early November showed Irish
companies among hundreds of businesses
using Luxembourg as a tax haven. By routing
Inflated property prices linked to offshore
trusts. By Rónán Lynch
Ansbacher back:
the Caymans,
LuxLeaks,
Offshore Leaks
and WikiLeaks
off shore
accounts
NEWS ANSBACHER
November 2014 15
money through Luxembourg in the form
of intra-business loans, these companies
were avoiding billions of euros in tax; the
annual tax savings achieved by Irish busi-
nesses including Glanbia and the Sisk Group
and Irish subsidiaries of multinationals
such as Pepsi and GlaxoSmithKline dwarfs
the money collected from the Ansbacher
accounts. Of course there is no sugges-
tion that the Luxembourg operations were
indulging in evasion as opposed to (legal)
avoidance. Among the companies availing of
the arrangement were several media inves-
tors including UK media group Northern
and Shell, which owns 50% of the Irish Star
and used an Irish branch of its Luxembourg
subsidiary to facilitate the deal; London
investment firm Doughty Hanson, which
owns TV3, also availed of Luxembourg tax
structure, as did the Cayman Islands-based
Tiger Global Private Investment Partners V,
which by 2008 had acquired a 25% share in
Daft Media. A follow up report in the Irish
Times found that Ireland’s biggest indige-
nous company, CRH, also had subsidiaries
in Luxembourg that engaged in the intra-
business loans that saved tax for other
businesses. The Luxembourg leaks story
drew irate comment from charities and cam-
paigners furious about tax income lost to the
Irish exchequer, though not from Bono who
recently expressed the view that tax avoid-
ance is a point of principle for Irish people.
The Cayman Islands, wealthiest of the
Caribbean islands, ranks as the fourth
largest tax haven in the world, with dourer
Luxembourg seizing second place, according
to the Tax Justice Network. The islands fea-
ture high in the 2013 ICIJ project Offshore
Leaks which contains details of over
100,000 secret trusts and funds based in
the Cook Islands, Singapore, the Cayman
Islands and British Virgin Islands. The ICIJ
developed the information into a search-
able database, which is open for public use
on its website www.icij.org. Ireland delivers
54 officers and master clients. John Ignatius
Quinn, more infamous as Séan Quinn bank-
rupt former richest man in Ireland is among
them along with 1614 offshore entities and
51 listed addresses. Interested readers are
recommended to dive into the database, as
the search programme visually displays the
linked entities. As the ICIJ website points out,
however, there are legitimate uses for off-
shore companies and trusts.
Among the main findings by the ICIJ about
offshore accounts are that government offi-
cials and their families and associates have
embraced the use of covert companies and
bank accounts; the mega-rich use complex
offshore structures to own property and
other assets, and the world’s top banks are
not adverse to providing their customers
with secrecy-cloaked companies in offshore
hideaways.
In the analysis of these unregulated capital
flows, the ICIJ was moved to ask this ques-
tion: where does the money end up being
spent or invested? A story titled ‘Hidden in
plain sight: New York just another island
haven’ traces the flow of international money
into New York’s highly priced apartments
and condominiums. The story notes that
New York property had traditionally been a
place for Mafia families to invest their illicit
profits, although they stuck to small, low-key
properties which they rented out as bars or
clubs. It noted that New York along withMi-
ami, Dubai and London are the major world
cities experiencing an influx of capital into
real estate, with the owners often remaining
hidden behind shell businesses. “Because
many buyers go to great lengths to hide
their interests in New York properties, it’s
impossible to put a number on what propor-
tion of buyers from overseas are laundering
ill-gotten gains”, it says. “Many act in an
above-board manner and use tax loopholes
that are legal in their home countries. But
it’s clear that New York’s public officials and
its real estate industry embrace the wealthy
and powerful without much thought to where
their money comes from”. Over
recent years, Irish residential
and commercial property mar-
kets seem to have surrendered
to the mercy of peripatetic inter-
national real estate investment
trusts and individuals with deep
pockets. Perhaps Dublin should
be added to the list.
Ireland featured in another
‘leaks’ operation. In 2009,
Wikileaks released a batch of
diplomatic communications,
now beautifully indexed at
https://cablegatesearch.wikile-
aks.org/search.php, including
what became known as the
‘Ireland Cables’, which showed
that the US government had will-
ing ‘confidential sources’ at the
highest level of government, the civil service
and the diplomatic service. They also showed
that the US government wasn’t impressed
with Irish governance. US ambassador Dan
Rooney wrote to Washington that Irish
elected officials were “an often unaccount-
able political class” that awarded themselves
undue perks. Unless the government acted
quickly, “Ireland’s tarnished reputation
could blacken further”, he noted. •
A full 200
customers of
Ansbacher
were identified
in a 2002
report but no
prosecutions
resulted
“

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