Ex-Irish PM took secret payments, judges rule
Source: Agencies |
March 23, 2012, Friday
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Print Edition
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FORMER Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern received at least 209,779 euros (US$276,000) in secret payments while in office and repeatedly told lies about this under oath, a mammoth fact-finding investigation ruled in Dublin yesterday in a long-awaited verdict.
The three judges led by Justice Alan Mahon stopped short of finding Ahern guilty of corruption, because they found no evidence that Ahern gave favors to any of his cash donors when he was finance minister in the 1990s. They did find two other former lawmakers in Ahern's Fianna Fail Party, including former Cabinet minister and European Union commissioner Padraig Flynn, guilty of corrupt acts by soliciting payments from property developers for personal use.
While the report itself was a fact-gathering effort and not a direct finding of any criminal wrongdoing, Fianna Fail announced it has asked state prosecutors to use the report as a basis for prosecuting anyone found to have taken corrupt payments, obstructed justice, dodged tax or other offenses.
Ahern, whose often bizarre and implausible 2007 testimony enraptured the nation, denied doing anything wrong but resigned from office in 2008 after 11 years in power.
Several lawmakers in Fianna Fail called on its current leader, Michael Martin, to expel Ahern from the party as punishment. Voters last year ousted the party from power and decimated its parliamentary ranks, a historic defeat driven by Ireland's humiliating negotiation of an international bailout. Ahern, 60, did not seek re-election.
Interest in the judges' final 3,211-page report - the product of a 15-year investigation expected to cost taxpayers more than 200 million euros - was so great that the investigators' website repeatedly crashed.
The three judges led by Justice Alan Mahon stopped short of finding Ahern guilty of corruption, because they found no evidence that Ahern gave favors to any of his cash donors when he was finance minister in the 1990s. They did find two other former lawmakers in Ahern's Fianna Fail Party, including former Cabinet minister and European Union commissioner Padraig Flynn, guilty of corrupt acts by soliciting payments from property developers for personal use.
While the report itself was a fact-gathering effort and not a direct finding of any criminal wrongdoing, Fianna Fail announced it has asked state prosecutors to use the report as a basis for prosecuting anyone found to have taken corrupt payments, obstructed justice, dodged tax or other offenses.
Ahern, whose often bizarre and implausible 2007 testimony enraptured the nation, denied doing anything wrong but resigned from office in 2008 after 11 years in power.
Several lawmakers in Fianna Fail called on its current leader, Michael Martin, to expel Ahern from the party as punishment. Voters last year ousted the party from power and decimated its parliamentary ranks, a historic defeat driven by Ireland's humiliating negotiation of an international bailout. Ahern, 60, did not seek re-election.
Interest in the judges' final 3,211-page report - the product of a 15-year investigation expected to cost taxpayers more than 200 million euros - was so great that the investigators' website repeatedly crashed.
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