DUBLIN, May 13: Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said on Sunday he had taken no bribes and was suffering “great personal turmoil” when he accepted cash from businessmen during the breakdown of his marriage in the 1990s.
A state of personal flux and career uncertainty meant his financial dealings were complex but not improper, said Ahern, who despite Ireland's thriving economy faces an uphill battle to win a third term in a May 24 general election.
“I took no bribe, engaged in no corrupt act and never breached the public trust,” Ahern, who was finance minister and briefly deputy prime minister at the time, said in a statement.
Media have hounded Ahern on the campaign trail for answers over his finances after reports surfaced two weeks ago that Manchester businessman Michael Wall gave 30,000 pounds ($59,330) to Ahern's then partner Celia Larkin in 1994.
Ahern said on Sunday the money had gone towards improvements on a house owned by Wall which Ahern rented starting in 1995 and then bought in 1997. Larkin also used some of the money to pay tax owed by Wall following his purchase of the property.
“The issues ... such as why I was renting a house, why my friends gave me money and why I did not operate a bank account for a period of years, are all related to my judicial separation,” Ahern told the Sunday Independent earlier.The revelations are part of a long-running payments scandal that last year prompted calls for Ahern to resign.
He headed off those demands in October with an emotional televised apology for accepting other payments from friends and businessmen in 1993 and 1994 that he said had been loans to help cover the legal costs of his separation.
SIMPLE, HONEST: Details of Ahern's finances have emerged from evidence given in private to a tribunal probing claims he accepted money from property developer Owen O'Callaghan in return for favours. Ahern has rejected those allegations as baseless and spiteful.
“I cannot believe that it is a coincidence that just as the election campaign got underway, the private proceedings of the Mahon tribunal ... were illegally leaked to the media,” he said.
The tribunal is one of a number of inquiries over the last decade into high-level corruption and murky political practices.
In 2003 Ahern's predecessor and mentor Charles Haughey paid taxes and penalties on over 10 million euros ($13.5 million) in payments received in office and used to fund a lavish lifestyle, including an 18th century mansion, a yacht and stud farm.
That stands in stark contrast to Ahern's man-of-the-people image, however, and the modest family house he ended up buying from Wall for 180,000 Irish pounds ($307,900).—Reuters
