The Deep Throat emigrant who doomed Bertie Ahern and exposed political corruption

Investigative journalist reveals who broke story on corruption in highest levels

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Former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern during the launch of his autobiography at Mansion House in Dublin.

Photo by Niall Carson/PA Wire

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As for Gilmartin, within a short few years Gilmartin was ousted unable to get his planning permission and Owen O’Callaghan and AIB controlled his company, Barkhill. A former Fianna Fáil press officer turned public relations man, Frank Dunlop, admitted later to bribing up to one third of the members of Dublin County Council on behalf of O’Callaghan and other clients in order to influence planning and zoning decisions, including in the effort to frustrate Gilmartin’s  other development at Quarryvale. False allegations from Dublin led to an unjustified demand on Gilmartin for £14 million by the British Inland Revenue service which had a devastating impact on his life and family. The service later apologised.

Now the 15 year judicial inquiry, known as the Mahon tribunal, has revealed  the entire  catalogue of political corruption through the 1980’s and 1990’s that reached into the heart of the Irish state.

The 3,000 page report cited a number of senior politicians, including former prime minister, Bertie Ahern, who was accused of lying to the investigation about the source of over £250,000 which went through various bank accounts when he was finance minister in the early 1990s.

Another former prime minister, Albert Reynolds, stands accused of inappropriately soliciting payments for the Fianna Fáil party from businessmen who were seeking commercial favours from the Government he headed during the same period. A former minister in his government and later European Union commissioner, Padraig Flynn, was accused of corruptly asking for, and then pocketing, a €50,000 donation given to the party by a property developer in 1989.

Since the report into planning corruption in Dublin was published, on Thursday (22nd March), Ahern has dramatically resigned from the party he led into Government three times since 1997 - just days ahead of a meeting where its national executive was to vote on a proposal from current leader, Micheál Martin, to expel him. Flynn has jumped ship also.

Ahern, who was once dubbed the “most skilful, the most devious, the most cunning of them all” by his mentor, Haughey, has been proven to have been too clever by half in his tribunal evidence.

His explanations concerning the source of large cash sums, including dollar and sterling amounts, which flowed through various accounts under his control in the early 1990s was rubbished in the tribunal report. The associates who gave evidence that they had collected cash for him, or ‘dig-outs’, to help him through a time when the politician had marital problems were accused of lying on his behalf.  In desperation, he claimed that he had won significant amounts of the sterling sums ‘on the horses’. He was forced to resign as Taoiseach in 2008 over his ‘incredible’ evidence at the tribunal. 

Its investigation into his personal finances commenced when Gilmartin informed tribunal lawyers of a conversation with the aforementioned Cork developer  Owen O’Callaghan during which the Cork developer said he had paid up to £80,000 in bribes to Ahern between 1989 and 1994.

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