Then and now versions of Ben Dunne story

Business Opinion: Whichever way you look at it Ben Dunne has been involved in telling an enormous whopper.

The question is, was he telling the truth in 1993, or is he telling the truth now?

Everyone knows the broad outline of what happened to the former supermarket magnate. Business pressures and cocaine use led, by 1993, to his becoming, in his own words, a broken, mad and suicidal man. His siblings on the board of the Dunnes Stores holding company removed him from his positions of director and head of what was then the largest family-owned business enterprise in the State. It may still be the largest, family-owned business in the State.

Last week at the Moriarty tribunal, we were again shown the note drafted by Bernard Uniacke, a member of the Dunne family trust, in June 1993. Ben Dunne had been removed from the board of Dunnes and he discussed a number of very serious issues with his solicitor, Noel Smyth, before he contacted Uniacke and launched his initial salvo over what he described as "commercial terrorism" aimed at getting his share of the value of the Dunnes Stores group.

Uniacke took a note. As part of his stated intention to seek the appointment of an inspector to the group, Dunne said he would "refer to the payment of £1 million paid to a member of the previous government to influence legislation affecting the trust".

Another point noted was: "Ben currently has an affidavit sworn by an internal accountant in Dunnes Stores showing the widespread dissipation of company funds."

These were among a number of other very serious matters that Dunne threatened to disclose. Almost all involved the taking of money out of the Dunnes group, something that should not have occurred as the group was owned by the family trust. Disclosure of these issues would raise questions of a civil and criminal nature, involving the group's money, the trust, and tax.

"If they are taking me out, I will take them out," Uniacke noted Dunne as saying.

In the event the trust and the family settled with Dunne in November 1994.

Dunne was given one fifth of the shares in the group, which he immediately sold back.

In the week prior to settlement, the trust and Ben Dunne's siblings sought particulars of the £1 million payment to the politician. A list of payments making up the amount were itemised, beginning with one in November 1987 by way of a cheque to John Furze. No mention was made of an earlier cheque, in May 1987, made out to a shelf company controlled by Furze called Tripleplan.

In time, items Dunne had threatened to disclose made their way into the media, and the McCracken (Dunnes Payments) Tribunal was created. It learned of the payments itemised in the list of particulars and investigated whether Charles Haughey did anything in return for the money received from Dunne.

All it found was a harmless meeting in 1988 between Dunne and the chairman of the Revenue, Philip Curran, that was arranged by Haughey.

The Moriarty tribunal has since discovered the Tripleplan payment. That payment indicates that the flow of funds to Haughey started earlier in 1987 than McCracken was led to believe. It means the flow of funds occurred soon after Haughey's appointment as Taoiseach, in March 1987.

Moriarty has also discovered that Haughey arranged meetings in 1987 with Séamus Pairceir, Curran's predecessor as chairman of the Revenue. These meetings involved very serious discussions concerning the Dunne trust and tax matters.

At the time a tax bill issued by the Revenue was causing panic within the Dunne family ranks. In the event the capital gains tax bill, for £38.8 million, was shot down by the Appeal Commissioners.

These two matters mean the whole question of Dunne's motive in giving to Haughey payments that eventually amounted to £1.9 million, must be reviewed.

Was Dunne telling the truth when he spoke to Uniacke in June 1993? Dunne has said he was not. Most of what he said was true, but the bit about seeking to influence legislation was not, he said. He said he had genuinely forgotten the Tripleplan payment and the Pairceir meetings, until they were brought to his attention by the Moriarty tribunal.

On Wednesday he pointed to the fact that while there was "dissipation" of Dunnes Stores funds, as stated to Uniacke, it was not the case that he had an affidavit from an internal auditor. In the same way that he had gilded the lily in relation to the payments to the unnamed politician, he implied, he had gilded the lily in relation to the dissipation issue.

However, on Thursday he agreed when it was put to him that he had thought at the time that the Dunnes Stores chief accountant, Michael Irwin, would be available to him in his dispute with his siblings. Irwin, Dunne said, knew about the dissipation of funds, and knew he was on the way out of Dunnes if Ben Dunne was. Dunne said he could have said to Smyth, his solicitor, that he would be able to get an affidavit.

This seems to mean that the only whopper, if whopper it was, on the list of items raised with Uniacke, was the issue that is now at the heart of the Moriarty tribunal's deliberations. Whatever about Dunne's motive, there has been no mention to date of any influencing of legislation affecting the trust. Dunne said the family was very concerned about the annual Discretionary Trust Tax (DTT) that came into being in 1984 not so much because of the 1 per cent of the trust's value that the tax levied, but for fear the percentage would increase over time.

The rate at which the tax is levied was never, in fact, increased.

Back in 1990 the Dunnes group was valued at £220 million and it paid £2.2 million in DTT. An increase of the tax rate to 2 per cent would have cost the group more in one year than Haughey got from Dunne during his 1987 to 1992 period in power.