Luke Byrne of the Mail on Sunday, who penned the original story related to the mobile phone expense claims of Senator Ivor Callely on Sunday, has been kind enough to pass on the original documents received from his FOI request. I have run an OCR process on the documents, and combined them into one PDF.
A declaration on the claims form states:
I HEREBY CERTIFY THAT THE EXPENSES CLAIMED HAVE BEEN ACTUALLY AND NECESSARILY INCURRED BY ME IN RELATION TO MY MEMBERSHIP OF DAIL EIREANN AND THE PARTICULARS FURNISHED HEREIN ARE IN ALL RESPECTS TRUE.
This is signed and dated by Mr Callely on each claim form.
The company on the headed paper, which gives its company number at the bottom of the document (150878), put out a notice in February 1994 that a liquidator was being appointed. You can read the company’s submissions on the CRO website. The company was subsequently dissolved. The claim forms were stamped by the Oireachtas on November 21 and 22, 2007. Another document is the certificate showing that the company was wound up by the Examiner’s Office.
Here are the documents:
There is a similar pattern of markings on the upper-left corners of the BCL receipts and Callely’s claim forms that relate to them. The other papers don’t have the same markings.
What is the origin of those marks? They remind me of the artifacts that you can get when you have blotch on a photocopier glass plate: it can indicate that documents have been copied on the same machine.
It might be interesting to investigate that in this context.
The phone numbers for the company are old six digit numbers – indicating that the headed paper is quite old. Has someone had a pile of paper lieing around for years that they were using to make these invoices?
@ Amadan – It might be possible that those marks originated from a photocopier within Leinster House used to send copies of the documents to Luke in the first place, and not necessarily from the Callely offices.
Still, well spotted. You could very well be on to something.
3 big give aways for me
1. The values are in £ although dated after euro conversion
2. The phone numbers on the invoice are 6 digit although dublin has been 7 digits for a decade at least
3. No email or www address even if it was 2003 or 2005?
Gavin, was wondering if an explicit complaint has been made to the Gardai using these documents yet?
P.
Not that I’m aware of. It is open to any citizen to make a complaint to the Gardai about Ivor Callely.
Ciaran Cuffe said on Tonight TV3 that Paul Gogarty is lodging a complaint with the Clerk of the Seanad – same procedure as the last time Ivor got called up before the Principal!
On that basis, it’s likely that the Gardai will leave it to the Seanad committee to refer it to the DPP if they think the facts warrant it. But not before they’ve had fun skewering Ivor again live on Leinster House TV.
Actually, looking at those marks, I’d say they’re staple holes.
Hello, Brian.. Brian can you hear me…Brian, just about…who is this..Brian, it’s Ivor..hold on Brian..i’ll call you back on my 2nd phone..Hello Brian..Can you hear me on this phone..Sorry Ivor, the line is bad..Hold on Brian, i’ll call you back on my 3rd phone..Now Brian can you hear me, it’s Ivor…..Yes Ivor, i can hear you now. are you in Dublin or Cork ?…Yes Brian i am…..You are where ?..In Dublin or Cork ?…I think so Brian….But Ivor you must know where you are….Well Brian, dont you know im a bit like Jaysus, i can be in many places at the one time…Thats why i need so many phones…Ah now hold on a minute Ivor..It’s one thing having 3 phones and two house’s….But there’s only one Jaysus in Fianna Fail..and that’s ME…. Hello, hello, Ivor are you still there ?
Apparently Gogarty has made a complaint to the Gardai about Callely.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0804/breaking9.html
I wonder if anything will come of it.
I have just checked on the Nokia website whether two of the phones referenced on the documents exist. The model references are not to be found on the website.
Has anyone looked into this???
Thanks for posting these Gavin; your site is an excellent public resource that I follow with interest. Thanks also to Luke Byrne for providing the documents. I lodged complaints earlier this week with both the Clerk of the Seanad and the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation using these documents as supporting evidence. There seem to have been several complaints – John Mulligan and Patrick Hurley have set two good precedents for how the citizenry should react to this behaviour.