The Ansbacher conspiracy - Colm Keena

The key to some of Ireland's darkest political and business secrets was kept in the archives of Guinness & Mahon bank in Dublin. Under the stewardship of Des Traynor, money lodged in the bank by some of Ireland's leading business people was quietly moved offshore to the Cayman Islands. The funds could then be repatriated and made available to the original depositor without any tax liability. This is the story of a network of the powerful and the well connected. The 1960s boom created a lot of new money and a lot of influence to go with it. There were builders, property speculators, hoteliers, suddenly sitting on loads of money. They needed connections, they craved access to power and they wished to keep very distant from the Revenue Commissioners. They had earned their money hard, dammit, and they weren't throwing it away on tax. At the centre of the web stood the biggest boss of all, Charles Haughey. It was he who had first apprenticed Des Traynor as an accountant. Now he ran all his personal finances through him. The network needed financial protection, so Traynor provided it and Haughey got the kickbacks to keep him in style in Kinsealy.;The Ansbacher Conspiracy tells how the scam worked, who was involved and how it unravelled.