Who signed SIM 263?
Come in P O'Neill, your time is up. For years there has been ongoing speculation in the media about the identity or identities of P O'Neill. Now however, a new mystery is emerging in the DIRT inquiry to rival any attempts to put a face to the elusive O'Neill.
In July 1986, a memo instructing revenue inspectors not to inspect the declarations made by people who had opened nonresident accounts was written by some unknown and untraceable person in the Revenue Commissioners.
The instructions were a temporary order and came just as new legislation had been introduced in Leinster House allowing the Revenue Commissioners to actually investigate the declarations of non residency.
It now transpires that thousands of these account holders were actually resident in Ireland the whole time and this was known openly in the branches where the accounts were held.
For the next 12 years, the Revenue Commissioners fully obeyed SIM 263. None of the officials who were called to the DIRT inquiry have been able to shed any light on who wrote the instructions they so faithfully followed.
The closer we have come to finding out the identity of the mysterious memo writer is that a now deceased principal inspector ``or someone under him'' had written SIM 263.
What is more interesting is that official after official has told the inquiry that the Revenue didn't have the powers to do this or do that. Now we find that for 12 years, one of the few powers they actually had was not used because someone wrote a memo saying they shouldn't.
This week, the DIRT inquiry is beginning to question the banks on their practices relating to the bogus accounts. Let's hope their fairy tales are more plausible than that supplied by the Revenue Commissioners.
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