Haughey bank linked to Cuban crook

Funds deposited in Dublin by a Cuban drug dealer may have been held in the same accounts used to pay Charles Haughey’s bills, the Moriarty Tribunal has found.

Funds deposited in Dublin by a Cuban drug dealer may have been held in the same accounts used to pay Charles Haughey’s bills, the Moriarty Tribunal has found.

Guinness & Mahon Bank, operated in Dublin by Haughey’s financial adviser Des Traynor, made substantial loans in the 1980s to Fernando Pruna, a Cuban exile and US citizen, and several of his companies and associates. The loans, over €3 million, were backed by deposits in Dublin with Guinness Mahon Cayman Trust.

The tribunal concluded in its report last week that these deposits may have been held in the same accounts from which Traynor operated Haughey’s bill-paying service.

Pruna set up a drug-smuggling operation in the 1980s, trafficking cocaine from Colombia to Florida. The deposits in Dublin, which backed the loans (as part of a money-laundering scheme), were the proceeds of drug-dealing. His operation was broken up in 1987. He was arrested and imprisoned in 1993.

The Moriarty report is highly critical of the banking operations conducted by Traynor, John Furze and John Collins, finding that, while they were not involved in the drugs trade themselves, their unorthodox and secretive banking arrangements for tax evasion facilitated money laundering.

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