It started with the receipt by the chairman of Bóthar of an anonymous letter on Good Friday two years ago. The sender claimed there had been irregularities in the recruitment of certain staff by the international aid charity’s then chief executive David Moloney and that he had turned a blind eye to dodgy expenses claims submitted by two employees.
n the overall scheme of things, the allegations were relatively minor.
But they proved to be the catalyst for a series of investigations which, it was alleged in the High Court this week, eventually uncovered a major fraud by Mr Moloney.
Following an application from Bóthar on Thursday, the former chief executive’s assets were temporarily frozen amid claims he misappropriated almost €465,000 for his own use and for the use of associates.
It was alleged this included almost €200,000 in cash supposedly paid to nuns in Tanzania but which the religious congregation says it never received, and tens of thousands of euro in personal credit card spending, including sums spent on two family holidays.
In a legal filing, it was claimed Mr Moloney tried to cover his tracks by deleting vast swathes of data from his computer and forging documents, and that he obstructed a series of investigations into his conduct and conspired with others to remove the charity’s chairman after the board commenced an inquiry into his conduct.
The scandal is a devastating development for the much-
loved charity, which was established in 1991 to provide farm animals to poverty-stricken families in developing countries.
The court heard Bóthar had reported matters to An Garda and the Charities Regulator, which has been investigating issues since last October.
Mr Moloney, of Clino, Newport, Co Tipperary, was not present for the application, as it was made on an ex-parte, or one side only, basis. The court was told he had denied all allegations of wrongdoing.
But there is much more at stake than his reputation.
A very real question mark must now hang over the future of the Limerick-based charity itself.
In light of events, Bóthar has ceased fundraising activities. In recent times it has been receiving around €5.5m a year in donations and charitable legacies.
Bóthar’s roots can be traced back to Limerick’s Treaty 300 celebrations in 1990. Local businessman Peter Ireton had the idea of marking the occasion by sending Irish cows to families in Uganda.
Bóthar was incorporated the following year and in 1995 Mr Moloney began working there. He rose through the ranks and replaced Mr Ireton as chief executive in 2011 but stood down in 2014, citing ill-health. He returned to the post a year later and remained in the position until his resignation in February.
According to an affidavit filed by charity director Harry Lawlor, Bóthar has helped thousands of families in Africa by donating animals and up to 2019 it seemed to the board it was operating very successfully.
It was on Good Friday, April 19, of that year that Mr Lawlor, who was Bóthar’s chairman, said he received an anonymous, unsigned and undated letter about Mr Moloney. “This complaint set in train a series of events, which had several consequences that I simply could not have foreseen at the time,” he said in his affidavit.
It was alleged in the anonymous complaint that Mr Moloney recommended the appointment of a lifelong friend to the charity without disclosing this relationship to the board. There were also allegations two Bóthar employees had been submitting expenses for unnecessary hotel stays, meals, room service and drinks and that Mr Moloney had refused to deal with the matter as he did not want the two staff to be disciplined or sacked.
Board member Pat Lavin was tasked with investigating the claims. According to Mr Lawlor’s affidavit, the probe concluded the employees were not entitled to the expenses. It also concluded the issue had been brought to Mr Moloney’s attention in January 2019 but there was no evidence he took any action until the chairman became aware of that April.
Mr Lawlor alleged that unknown to him at the time, Mr Moloney conspired with other staff to force him to step down as chairman due to the length of time he had been on the board. He said he had “no doubt” this was done by Mr Moloney with the aim of deflecting attention from any investigation into his conduct. Mr Lawlor stood down in November 2019 for a period of 12 weeks.
The board commissioned an investigation by consultants Smith and Williamson into financial controls at the charity, which began in April 2020. According to Mr Lawlor, later that month Mr Moloney made a formal bullying complaint against him. A barrister appointed to investigate the claims found they were not well founded, he said in his affidavit.
The Smith and Williamson investigation made a number of “troubling findings” relating to transactions and expenses, Mr Lawlor said.
The board set up a sub-committee to investigate these issues further but, according to Mr Lawlor, Mr Moloney did not co-operate.
Help was enlisted from an IT security expert, who found 98pc of Mr Moloney’s email inbox had been deleted in November 2020. A forensic accountant was also retained to review the charity’s bank statements from 2014 to 2020.
Resulting from the various investigations, five key allegations have been levelled at Mr Moloney. These were outlined in detail in Mr Lawlor’s affidavit.
The first was that Mr Moloney withdrew €192,349 in charity funds in eight tranches between 2013 and 2019 and claimed these had been paid to Sister Viji, a nun with the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Sisters in Tanzania. The board had never heard of her.
It is alleged he forged receipts and fabricated a series of documents to vouch for the payments but Sister Viji confirmed they were never received by her or her mission. She said she had met Mr Moloney in Bóthar’s offices in 2014 or 2015 and later sent several emails requesting funding but “not a cent” was ever provided.
The second allegation relates to three payments totalling stg£110,000 (€127,158) to an English company, Agricultural Innovation Consultants Limited (AICL), which Mr Moloney is alleged to have arranged. Mr Lawlor claimed Mr Moloney and Billy Kelly, a former journalist who co-founded Bóthar and was later a director with a UK charity called Msaada, arranged for the money to be “paid away to AICL”.
He alleged the sums were paid to discharge the cost of consultancy services to be provided in connection with charitable activities in Rwanda but, to the best of his knowledge, the projects in question were “falsified”.
According to his affidavit, AICL was later dissolved and the payments were not recorded in its accounts. Mr Lawlor said he did not know what Mr Moloney, Mr Kelly or AICL did with the funds.
Mr Kelly told the Irish Independent he was not involved in AICL and he did not know what Mr Lawlor was talking about. Efforts to speak to a representative of AICL proved unsuccessful.
A third allegation is that Mr Moloney used credit cards issued to him by Bóthar to pay €47,638 in what appeared to be personal expenses, including family holidays.
Flights between Shannon and Mallorca for Mr Moloney and his family cost €3,916, while motor expenses costing an additional €6,219 were also alleged to have been racked up.
A fourth allegation is that Mr Moloney used cheques drawn on Bóthar’s account to withdraw €64,820 in cash.
The fifth main allegation is that he awarded himself an unauthorised 13th monthly salary payment and accumulated a pension fund of at least €604,630.
Mr Lawlor said, to the best of his knowledge, the pension fund and Bóthar’s contributions to it were never authorised by the board.
Mr Moloney’s solicitors had recently asked Bóthar to permit him to encash the policies but the request was refused, Mr Lawlor said.
Altogether, the charity alleges €464,346 had been misappropriated.
However, Mr Lawlor said in his affidavit that investigations were ongoing.
“There is great concern that Mr Moloney has taken considerably more money from Bóthar,” he said.
Mr Moloney has yet to give his version of events. He has not returned calls from the Irish Independent since the charity initiated proceedings against him on April 1.
