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00:00:03Morning, guys.
00:00:05I met Larry Goodman for the first time
00:00:07at an international beef symposium in Dublin.
00:00:10I'll never forget it.
00:00:14I was only a young upstart at the time.
00:00:18I was a trade advisor,
00:00:20and I was giving him one of the keynote addresses
00:00:23about vacuum-packed beef.
00:00:26If you put beef in a plastic bag
00:00:29that has an oxygen barrier,
00:00:30then you can keep it for six months.
00:00:33It was a eureka moment.
00:00:37When the thing was over and I was taking a deep breath,
00:00:40coming down off the stage,
00:00:42I met Larry Goodman for the first time.
00:00:44I knew who he was
00:00:46because I had seen his photograph in the paper.
00:00:50Larry was growing in the beef industry.
00:00:54He was this formidable figure.
00:00:58He was the main man in the beef business
00:01:01because he was buying a new factory almost every weekend.
00:01:07Expansion continued when he bought
00:01:08amalgamated meat packers in Carlow
00:01:10and a meat factory in Inneskillen.
00:01:11In 1983, he bought Dublin meat packers
00:01:14and the factories of the Robert Wilson Group.
00:01:17They had a reputation as being tough men from the border.
00:01:22They were known to be good at what they'd done.
00:01:25Do you reckon you're going to take over at Bailey Butter?
00:01:27Yeah.
00:01:28That's what we're here for.
00:01:31When I'd finished speaking at the symposium,
00:01:34he said, hey, Pascal, that was very interesting.
00:01:37Do you believe that's going to happen?
00:01:39I said, Larry, it's going to happen.
00:01:40And he said, Pascal, you believe in it.
00:01:43I have the facilities to do it.
00:01:45Come on.
00:01:46Why can't we do it together?
00:01:50So I said, well, hallelujah.
00:01:52That was how it happened.
00:01:54But I never dreamed of what would happen.
00:01:58Nor did he.
00:02:00Larry Goodman.
00:02:01Larry Goodman.
00:02:01Larry Goodman.
00:02:02Larry Goodman.
00:02:03Larry Goodman.
00:02:03Larry Goodman has for years been known as the beef baron.
00:02:06Goodman is the biggest beef processor in Europe.
00:02:09The blue-eyed boy of the Irish political establishment.
00:02:12It became very political.
00:02:15Politicians began to see Larry's interests as the country's interests.
00:02:20Didn't Fianna Fáil, certainly that was the allegation,
00:02:22look after Goodman International?
00:02:24I don't believe they did.
00:02:26You don't believe they did anything to help?
00:02:28Very little.
00:02:31Goodman's rise, certainly in the 1980s,
00:02:34was very much tied to Charlie Hawley.
00:02:36They run in parallel.
00:02:38The same basic idea that they're going to be the sort of big,
00:02:41energising forces that were going to create Indigenous Irish industry.
00:02:45And they also sort of collapse at the same time.
00:02:48Mr Goodman, can I please ask you why bogus stamps are routinely used in your plants?
00:02:53Last Tuesday came further allegations of irregularities
00:02:56that two Goodman plants.
00:02:59Mr Goodman?
00:03:00Mr Goodman?
00:03:02Mr Goodman?
00:03:02Larry Goodman is one of the few people in the entire history of the Irish state
00:03:08who managed for a significant period to have that state identify its interests entirely with his.
00:03:18And conversely, to say that whatever he wanted, whatever was good for him, was good for Ireland.
00:03:41This is a scene that's repeated a million times every spring, and it is the first step in what we
00:03:46call the cattle trade.
00:03:49In Ireland, calves have been bought and sold in markets like this for hundreds of years.
00:03:56I'm a member of a family that's been six generations in the exportation of live cattle.
00:04:01My family were in the live trade for six generations.
00:04:05Larry is very proud of the fact that he's sixth generation as a cattle dealer.
00:04:10His father and his grandfather and all this kind of thing.
00:04:15Buying and selling would have been in the blood.
00:04:18Because his father was a cattle dealer and, you know, was a tough man, took no prisoners.
00:04:25The dealers are impatient men. They would like to buy quickly and leave for another fair in another town.
00:04:32One day it'll be his turn, but not just yet.
00:04:37Larry would have grown up in this environment.
00:04:40He was born in 1937 in Dundalk.
00:04:44His father was in the meat business exporting live cattle to Britain.
00:04:50At the same time, he had a number of butcher's shops around the locality.
00:04:56Larry was born in just the pre-war, and then he grew up during the war, which were tough times.
00:05:02I don't think he was that keen a student.
00:05:05You know, he didn't ever continue secondary school.
00:05:09Larry started buying and selling sheep casings as a 15 or 16-year-old.
00:05:14The case is that sheep gut is full of undigested food and manure.
00:05:23They would have been sold to sausage manufacturers.
00:05:35Very early on, he bought a meat factory just by saying Dundalk.
00:05:43There's it.
00:05:45That would have been 1966.
00:05:52We are outside the gate of Ravensdale Meat Factory, which was where Larry Goodman first started his slaughtering career.
00:06:03This was the starting point. The birth. This is where it all began.
00:06:14In those early days, most of the trade was in live cattle, but Goodman saw opportunities in the meat business.
00:06:20It was the Anglo-Irish Meat Company at Ravensdale. It was the company lumbered by heavy debt at the time.
00:06:25But he turned it round and began to make profit from the word gold.
00:06:31The live cattle business is the most primitive of all markets that you can imagine.
00:06:37You're selling the animal alive.
00:06:41If one wanted an easy life and to get in and get out and make money, I'd be in the
00:06:45live trade.
00:06:45My family were in it for six generations. If I wanted an easy life.
00:06:49If you're interested in challenge and the future, I think I'd stay with the meat trade.
00:06:56Larry realises that the possibility that's there is to make a lot more money, to add a lot more value
00:07:03and to be of more use to the country.
00:07:06To actually create jobs in these meat plants by processing the meat environment.
00:07:15In that sense, he began to get out from under the shadow of his father and establish himself.
00:07:28Larry Goodman would have been our competition.
00:07:32We always said, God, Goodman's probably in there before us.
00:07:36You know, he always seemed to be steps ahead.
00:07:40I had heard about him, that he was formidable.
00:07:43People would say he was the man.
00:07:45And he had a habit of trusting farmers.
00:07:49They trusted him because he would pay them on the day that he bought the animals.
00:07:56He had a slogan.
00:07:58When we weigh, we pay.
00:08:03Larry was determined to expand.
00:08:06And every opportunity that arose, he moved in and purchased other plants.
00:08:16He had the factory in Dundalk and very quickly then, I think he bought Bagnellstown,
00:08:20Claire, Nina, Ballymun, and Clovermeats and Waterford.
00:08:26He practically had them all.
00:08:28So he could dictate prices for farmers, bringing supplies in, and then a choice, a multiple choice of factories.
00:08:35Every meat plant we have, with the exception of one, was either in financial trouble and about to go into
00:08:42receivership, or was in receivership, or was closed when we bought them.
00:08:46The Goodman Group started small, as many of these things do.
00:08:51And then obviously you buy a plant and you start to actually, you know, kill the cattle and sell the
00:08:58meat on.
00:08:58And then you buy another plant because you are good at that.
00:09:01And then you buy a third plant and he was able to build up his business and become a producer
00:09:06of beef.
00:09:12I didn't have misgivings because I met this individual, a charming man, open, talkative.
00:09:21We discussed things, we debated things, and I was very impressed with him as an individual.
00:09:27And he was open to what I was talking about and he could see it.
00:09:31He was in total control.
00:09:38He was so particular and so exact and precise.
00:09:43When he would drop into Ballymun, he would have a little timetable and say,
00:09:48Amen, I want to go to the bone hall, I want to be two minutes at that job, three minutes
00:09:53checking that, four minutes checking that.
00:09:55And I want to be out of here after eight minutes.
00:09:57I want to be on the helicopter and away.
00:10:01It was business first, second, third.
00:10:04We pride ourselves on three particular policies, if you like, in which our company is built around.
00:10:10And that's efficiency, marketing excellence and financial strength.
00:10:15He wouldn't exactly be a man you'd meet in a pub either.
00:10:18He wouldn't strike me as somebody who went to a pub to drink pints or anything.
00:10:22There would be no small talk.
00:10:24No, we had the match last week, because he wouldn't have been at the match.
00:10:28No, he did not talk.
00:10:31Shit talk.
00:10:32I loved it.
00:10:34His only interest was the industry.
00:10:37It was 24-7 occupation of his.
00:10:41By now, Goodman's Anglo-Irish group had come to be seen as a central player in the agriculture industry.
00:10:48Oh, my God, I idolized the man.
00:10:51He just, to me, seemed to have that power in himself, torn water into wine.
00:11:04The first real chink in the protective armor that was around Goodman came from an ostensibly pretty small case.
00:11:14So, it's 1982.
00:11:16Customs officer in Cork opens a package.
00:11:20There are these weird stamps.
00:11:23And they're rubber stamps for port authorities in South Africa, right?
00:11:28Why are there official stamps turning up in a package going to Cork?
00:11:36Nobby Quinn, the Lord of Merciana, was Larry's right-hand man.
00:11:43He was a great beef man, knew his cattle, knew how to deal with farmers.
00:11:48So, if Larry was buying the factories, Nobby was the one who went in, kicked them into shape, got the
00:11:53costing right, got the technical things right, etc.
00:11:57He was the backbone to the Goodman meat organization.
00:12:01And it was tough, tough business.
00:12:05What is the scale of the compensation?
00:12:07What, for example, would a cut finger get you?
00:12:09Well, the cut finger really depends on the, practically the number of stitches, really, inserted in the finger.
00:12:16And it can cost anything from 500 to 2,500 pounds.
00:12:21Nobby Quinn was my father.
00:12:24Norbert Quinn is his proper title, but he was known as Nobby.
00:12:29My first memory of him was always that he was a very busy fella.
00:12:32When I was probably four or five, he was always away, you know, at work, night and day.
00:12:38Went very early in the morning, home late in the even time.
00:12:41We always knew that he was very senior, and we always heard of the name Larry Goodman, and he was
00:12:45known as Mr. Larry.
00:12:46Everybody called him Mr. Larry.
00:12:48I remember my mother, the very first time we were going to that factory, and my mother said,
00:12:51if you see Mr. Larry, make sure you say hello, Mr. Larry.
00:12:54So, there was a respect that you had to have for Mr. Larry.
00:12:57But my father was very much second after that, you know.
00:13:05They were exporting beef to South Africa.
00:13:08South Africa was outside the European Union.
00:13:11So, if you exported there, you got export refunds.
00:13:15But you only got them if it was prime beef.
00:13:19So, essentially, they got a stamp made by a company in Britain, somewhere near Manchester, I think.
00:13:25But customs intercepted it, coming back in, and they said, this looks a bit strange.
00:13:31This is the kind of stamp that would be applied in South Africa.
00:13:36Customs let the stamp through, but it began an investigation by customs and Garda fraud squad
00:13:41after the stamp was used by CAIR meatpackers.
00:13:44CAIR submitted the entry form to the Department of Agriculture with a claim for £163,000,
00:13:50and the department refused to pay.
00:13:55I never saw him as being worried about it.
00:13:58You know, rules were there to be respected, but bent when you needed to.
00:14:03And you crossed the bridge later on, if there was a bridge to be crossed later on.
00:14:07You used to use that terminology all the time, we'd cross that bridge in the future if we have to.
00:14:10I think that was a very Irish thing at the time.
00:14:15Nobby Quinn resigned from his post in Goodman International after the court case.
00:14:21That was actually the first sort of holiday he ever took,
00:14:24because he worked from the early 70s and never took a holiday.
00:14:28That was an enforced holiday, I think this was, he was off for most of that year.
00:14:32And I always remember it was a really lovely summer time, and my father would take us all down,
00:14:37myself and my three brothers, and we'd all go down and play golf with him.
00:14:40It seemed like a nice time, but we knew that the reason why he was, was that there was something
00:14:44up.
00:14:49It was an eye-opener for me, certainly.
00:14:52I didn't know that they would be forging a stamp when they knew that the South Africans wouldn't stamp it
00:14:57as beef.
00:14:59When I heard about it way afterwards, I thought, whoa, that was an interesting approach.
00:15:04That was the first time I ever heard creation of stamps.
00:15:08The Iranian party visited their first meat plant at Caring County, Tipperary.
00:15:11Very well.
00:15:12Greeted by Larry Goodman of Anglo-Irish Meats, the group inspected the plant.
00:15:21He started to emerge as a bigger businessman, and he started thinking about how to expand.
00:15:27And if there was a market in Iran, or a market in Iraq, or a market in America,
00:15:31he was looking, he was interested, he was thinking about that. He was smart.
00:15:35Quite frankly, there are only three million people in Ireland.
00:15:37And if Ireland and the agribusinesses to succeed, it's got to export.
00:15:42I always felt that he was way, way ahead of us.
00:15:45You know, they were starting to move into Middle Eastern markets and that.
00:15:48So, like, we'd have to look them up in the map to see where they were.
00:15:53There was strict security as the Iranians arrived in Cashel.
00:15:56They had a lunch of Irish salmon and garlic steak, washed down by Irish mineral water.
00:16:01When it comes to marketing in the Middle East, we were the first people to put the Irish beef into
00:16:07all the major markets now existing for Irish beef in the Middle East.
00:16:14Larry Goodman seems to have gone to Iraq first in 1981, really just kind of scouting for business.
00:16:24Saddam Hussein was in power in Iraq and he was at war with Iran.
00:16:30This is one of the worst examples of a gas attack in this war, perhaps the worst.
00:16:35The bodies which litter this town were those of people who ran out of their houses to try to escape
00:16:40the gas and then were killed out in the open.
00:16:47It was a vicious war. There wasn't too many people who would do what Larry did and go in there
00:16:54and find buyers in the middle of this conflict.
00:16:59By the mid-1980s, he was selling substantial amounts of beef to Iraq.
00:17:14The export credit insurance system was that if you secured a contract in Iraq and Iraq did not pay you
00:17:23for the beef that you supplied, then the Irish state would reimburse you 100%.
00:17:29But what the Iraqis start doing is they basically say you won't get a contract unless you've got export credit
00:17:36insurance.
00:17:37But the scheme had its benefits also for Saddam Hussein.
00:17:41And what's really clear is that this is just about the Iraqis sucking in credit because you could sort of
00:17:48barter this insurance into bank loans.
00:17:52And they had systems of banks that they controlled in other countries as well, so they could move this money
00:17:57around.
00:17:58And effectively, they were funding a lot of arms purchases using Western government's credit.
00:18:11One of the mysteries in this whole story is exactly what was the relationship between Charlie Hawi and Saddam Hussein
00:18:17and the Iraqi government.
00:18:20Charlie Hawi turns up in the late 1970s as Minister for Health in Baghdad.
00:18:25And with him is Liam Lawler, which we don't know why.
00:18:29He's just a backbench Fianna Fáil TD for Dublin West.
00:18:34Now, the extraordinary thing about Hawi's relationship with the Iraqi regime is that shortly after he's come back from Baghdad,
00:18:441979, he fulfilled his ambition to become Taoiseach.
00:18:49As a community, we have been living beyond our means.
00:18:53This situation can be got under control if we follow the old-fashioned, sensible doctrine of living within our means.
00:19:02Hawi is in trouble.
00:19:03He has been running up enormous debts.
00:19:08Extraordinarily, Charlie Hawi, in confronting his bankers, Allied Irish Bank, he offers to pay them some money back, but not
00:19:15as much as he owes them.
00:19:16And then he says, I can arrange a deposit of £10 million from the Iraqi Rafadean Bank.
00:19:29A completely state-owned Iraqi bank, entirely controlled by Saddam Hussein and his family.
00:19:36So we have this extraordinary situation where the incoming Taoiseach is involved in ways that we still don't quite understand
00:19:48in financial arrangements with the Iraqi regime.
00:20:00I was about two years in Bagnellstown, and then Larry says, the Boning Hall, that's what we call the place
00:20:09where we de-boned, is ready now in care.
00:20:12Pascal, the volume is down there, to develop the boneless, vacuum-packed division.
00:20:19At the same time, Larry was doing the deals and growing in the beef industry.
00:20:26Things were going fantastic.
00:20:29Larry Goodman has for years been known as the beef baron. He's Ireland's biggest processor and Europe's biggest beef exporter.
00:20:37I started the business when I left school, and it's grown from very small beginnings to a very major international
00:20:48organisation at this point in time.
00:20:50The whole empire, turning over 800 million a year, employing 2,000, is controlled by the man who's said to
00:20:56work 100 hours a week.
00:20:57He travels by helicopter and expects his well-paid staff to be available at all times.
00:21:04There are two big things happening in Ireland in the 1980s.
00:21:08One is that the economy is contracting.
00:21:12The population is contracting. People are emigrating because it's such dire circumstances.
00:21:18And one person is rising and expanding at an astonishing rate.
00:21:29Larry Goodman was emerging around that time as somebody with influence.
00:21:34He started to look around and go, well, how can I make this bigger?
00:21:37How can I make it better? How can I earn more money?
00:21:40Never a crime.
00:21:42And, of course, then when an opportunity came up to buy a co-op that was involved in the dairy
00:21:48side, not the beef side, he thought he'd have a go.
00:21:51We've got access to the shelf space and every major supermarket in the UK, and in Germany, and in France.
00:21:58And that isn't backed by the other offer from the other people.
00:22:01That was the point at which everyone went, oh, he's going to diversify.
00:22:05And now suddenly he seemed even bigger.
00:22:07What do you say when people say that Larry Goodman is now destroying the co-opter movement?
00:22:12I say that's not correct at all.
00:22:14What we're talking about is providing a bit of competition.
00:22:17And I'm amazed to see why everyone seems to be so concerned about getting some competition into the dairy industry.
00:22:24Yesterday, Larry Goodman's coated company Food Industries launched a proposed merger of co-ops,
00:22:28which, if it goes ahead, would make the new co-op the second largest in the country.
00:22:32We are at this point in time immediately investing 10 million pounds.
00:22:37So his ambitions are pretty limitless.
00:22:41Some people said here tonight that your offer is too generous, too good to be true, that there must be
00:22:46a catch. Is there?
00:22:47No, there's never a catch with us.
00:22:58So who is he, the man who now owns almost half the Irish beef industry, who employs 2,500 people,
00:23:06whose business alone accounts for 3% of GNP?
00:23:18Most farmers are sort of worried about this aspect of the trade which has crept in over the last number
00:23:23of years,
00:23:24where the main meat man, Larry Goodman, has taken over a lot of different plants, and these used to be
00:23:29individual plants.
00:23:30There is that worry of monopoly creeping into the beef industry.
00:23:38Farmers had realised that Larry Goodman was a businessman.
00:23:43He would pay whatever he had to pay because that's what businessmen do.
00:23:47And Larry was the ultimate businessman.
00:23:51In 1986 came a serious clash with the IFA when they cried monopoly to a Goodman attempt to buy the
00:23:57crippled IMP co-op meat factories at Middleton and Leakslip.
00:24:01Owned by farmers, their last direct interest in that end of the business.
00:24:05Farmers at that time could see Larry was accumulating all these meat factories and that eventually, if he was allowed
00:24:13to buy them all up, there wouldn't be any competition.
00:24:16The expansion of the Goodman empire has been strongly condemned by the IFA on the grounds that it could lead
00:24:22to a monopoly situation for beef farmers.
00:24:24Recriminations between Anglo-Irish's Larry Goodman and the IFA continue.
00:24:28And the latest twist to this particular epic is the call by IFA President Joe Ray for the sale of
00:24:33the IMP plant at Leakslip to be frozen.
00:24:35The IFA called a high-level presidential meeting with IMP at which they instructed the IMP executives not to accept
00:24:45bids from Anglo-Irish beef packers.
00:24:47This annoyed us.
00:24:49This annoyed us.
00:24:50It meant this annoyed me.
00:24:52But he would never say that.
00:24:54He was that type, you know.
00:24:55In fact, Goodman, so upset with their interference in his attempted purchase of Cork IMP, pulled the plug on IFA
00:25:02levies valued at over £100,000.
00:25:05Our principle is far more important than our income.
00:25:08And the principle involved for you at the time was what?
00:25:11The principle was that we did not want to see any one group of companies or any one company with
00:25:16more than 40-45% of the meat industry.
00:25:19The penny dropped, I would think. That's when they realised the direction in which Larry was going. Larry wouldn't stop.
00:25:27He had them all on the palm of his hand and the farmers could see this.
00:25:37Coming up to Christmas 1986, there's a huge crisis for the Goodman Empire.
00:25:44So senior management summoned the guy who's running the Waterford plant.
00:25:49He's a guy called Eamonn Mackle.
00:25:51And Goodman used him as a subcontractor.
00:25:58I had finished up for Christmas a couple of days before Christmas and I was up at home.
00:26:03And I got a call that I needed to go for the next day to go, which was Christmas Eve,
00:26:08to go down to Waterford.
00:26:09The customs were there and there were some discrepancies in weights.
00:26:16Customs authorities start opening boxes in the coal stores in Waterford.
00:26:20And they realised that these boxes do not correspond to the documents, to what they're supposed to contain.
00:26:26Now, you're talking about hundreds of tonnes of beef.
00:26:30So they realised that there's something really fishy going on here.
00:26:34Customs officers described how boxes of beef, which the company had put into private storage under an EC scheme, actually
00:26:40contained less meat than was listed on documents going with them.
00:26:45This becomes a real problem for the Goodman organisation because there's a lot of money at stake.
00:26:51It's also potentially criminal and this is fraudulent.
00:26:55The subsidies being paid to beef processors to put their meat into intervention in order not to flood the market
00:27:02was European taxpayers' money.
00:27:05So basically, this was ripping off the EU taxpayer.
00:27:12I was flown down in a helicopter and we met Gerry Thornton, who was Goodman's beef factory overall manager, I
00:27:19think.
00:27:20And the customs were there.
00:27:23I was in a room and they all were out talking.
00:27:27And after about an hour, they finished up and said, right, well, we're going home.
00:27:33And then, while we're flying home, I said, well, I need to know.
00:27:41And we had a massive argument in that helicopter.
00:27:46Basically, what had been accusing me of doctoring the weights.
00:27:50You know, what were you guys at? What was your team at there?
00:27:54You know, there's no smoke without fire. Like, there's something going on there.
00:27:58The customs investigation is ongoing. So this is a huge operation.
00:28:02I mean, they have to open like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of boxes of meat and sample them and
00:28:08test them and weigh them.
00:28:09So there's a huge operation. Who do you get? You have to get Goodman people to go in and open
00:28:14the boxes.
00:28:15The customs don't have the staff to do this.
00:28:16And what the customs discover is that the guys who were supposed to be helping them are themselves, you know,
00:28:24out with markers, changing numbers on boxes, changing weights.
00:28:30So there's definitely a coordinated attempt by somebody in the Goodman organization to cover up the fraud that was going
00:28:42on in Waterford and to bamboozle the customs authorities.
00:28:46Goodman was quick to blame subcontractors at the two meat plants for the irregularities.
00:28:52They blamed Eamon Mackle, the subcontractor, who had done the deboning.
00:28:57Like, it was no benefit to me. I had to produce a yield. I did my job. I did my
00:29:04job well.
00:29:06The department's statement this evening clearly vindicates and clears our group's good name.
00:29:11There was one matter which relates to an unacceptable practice carried out by a subcontractor to our group in our
00:29:16Waterford and Ballymunt plant.
00:29:18As soon as we discovered that practice, that contractor's contract was terminated.
00:29:23That was the most horrible time of my life. I never, ever stood in a Goodman factory afterwards.
00:29:36Right through that latter end of the 1980s, lots of stories were beginning to emerge about things that were not
00:29:44good at Goodman companies.
00:29:47Irregularities in the way the beef was being processed, irregularities in relation to re-boxing meat and so on.
00:29:55I think it's despicable that people of this type can use the protection of the Dáil to make allegations.
00:30:04If illegal activities are taking place, I think it is right there to be raised in the Dáil if there's
00:30:09a suspicion of illegal activities.
00:30:11We're not prepared to stand for it. We've asked them to repeat it in public, outside the Dáil privilege, where
00:30:18we can take them through the legal process.
00:30:20If somebody in this country makes a false application to the Department of Social Welfare for unemployment assistance, that's called
00:30:30fraud.
00:30:31If somebody in this country submits documentation which results in a penalty of a million pounds, that's called, euphemistically speaking,
00:30:41an irregularity.
00:30:42I think the words speak for themselves.
00:30:45The allegations made by Mr Desmond against our company and against me are totally untrue.
00:30:50And I'm absolutely disgusted that people of this left-wing calibre and element can do such damaging things to our
00:30:57company, to the country.
00:30:58They're anti-private industry, they're anti-success, they're anti-effort, and they're anti-bloody-well-everything, and we won't stand
00:31:04for it.
00:31:11Larry saw me as a cog in his wheel for his objectives, and that's perfectly fine, and a paid well
00:31:17cog at that.
00:31:20I was expected to do what he want, both asked and unasked.
00:31:29Larry Goodman owned you.
00:31:31I was paid a fortune, so he was the priority over everything.
00:31:39So I decided I was going to manage my own destiny, and I decided I'm finished with Larry Goodman, no
00:31:46more.
00:31:48I had a good bit of savings, so I was relatively independent, and I decided, no, I was going to
00:31:55give it a shot.
00:31:57And then I saw the other side of Larry Goodman.
00:32:01We were having a lunch, and it never happened to be before.
00:32:07He wasn't raising his voice, but he was going at me so intensely.
00:32:14I couldn't concentrate.
00:32:16You had this planned all along.
00:32:18You joined me just to get a bit of experience.
00:32:21Now you want to do your own thing.
00:32:22He was ferocious.
00:32:25Nobody had ever left Larry Goodman's organisation.
00:32:30This had the potential to break the spell a bit.
00:32:36Pascal Field set up his own plants and became very successful, but I think there was a lot of animosity
00:32:41between him and Larry, and my old boy would have mentioned this, that there was animosity.
00:32:46I built a new factory in a field in Ballymahan. It was my first real deboning plant. And then I
00:32:53got a grant from the European Union to build a new repertoire in Bandon, and started in the slaughtering business
00:33:02myself.
00:33:04If you showed disloyalty to the Goodman Group, then the people who stayed in the Goodman Group would have pulled
00:33:11back from you, and you would have been the persona non-grab. I know that Pascal Field certainly was.
00:33:17I was ploughing a separate furrow in boneless beef, and I was meeting what the market wanted, and they couldn't
00:33:26get enough of it. So I didn't worry about Larry Goodman.
00:33:30When Pascal Field set up the Master Meats Group, it enjoyed quite a lot of success. It was looking at
00:33:36doing things differently. It was winning contracts in the UK. It began to rise up as a kind of a
00:33:43competitive threat to the Goodman operation.
00:33:48If anyone feels they want to buy a meat plant or two or three, we're happy to compete with them.
00:33:54There's still a lot of plants out there in the beef business competing with us, and we're happy to compete
00:33:58with them.
00:33:59Welcoming Larry Goodman as a rival would be like having a pet tiger that's fully grown. It could be fine
00:34:05for a while and smiling, and the next thing you lose your arm.
00:34:08There are a lot of people who were there ten years ago in our business that aren't there today. That's
00:34:13for starters.
00:34:14Goodman was number one in Ireland. Master Meats probably got up as far as about number three in Ireland.
00:34:20And I think Pascal Field was someone who had a lot of ambition to really keep on going.
00:34:26Perhaps Larry Goodman recognised that competitive threat, and there was a rivalry between them.
00:34:33The largest operator, Larry Goodman's Anglo-Irish beef processors, has an estimated capacity in eight factories for 20,000 beasts
00:34:40a week.
00:34:40And Master Meats, with plants in Cromwell, Bandon and Freshford, are able to handle almost 5,000 cattle.
00:34:47Every penny I had was in this business, and temptation came calling.
00:34:54And this guy, who I knew for many years, an oldish man, kind of a grandfather type, called Zachariah Tower,
00:35:01offered me a nice fat check for 50% of the business.
00:35:08Zach was a bit, at that time, the king of the Middle East tender system.
00:35:16And I thought, OK, apart from the cash, I thought, well, this helps me diversify market as well.
00:35:23But I never dreamed of what would happen.
00:35:38There was a change of government.
00:35:41Fianna Fáil got into power in 1987.
00:35:44That was a significant change.
00:35:46It became very political then.
00:35:50From 87 on, Larry Goodman was perceived as one of Fianna Fáil's best supporters, one of their closest allies.
00:35:58If we feel there's something out there that's of some help to us, we'll use it to whatever advantage we
00:36:04can.
00:36:04And we call on the present government to assist us if we think they're helpful.
00:36:09In the last government, under Gareth Fitzgerald and Minister Deasy, we called on them and we had them support us
00:36:15where they could give us support.
00:36:16Larry had a very good entree to the government.
00:36:19But others also, you know, I was able to speak to the Minister for Industry and Commerce.
00:36:24The government considered that Larry was dominant in that market.
00:36:30It was an important market and he should be supported.
00:36:33As to his success politically, that's a big question.
00:36:38I think in the industry it was considered he had access to the government that nobody had.
00:36:45It was a mutual thing. The better Larry did, the better it was for the government.
00:36:51Back in those days, 50% of people were working in agriculture, whereas now we're down to 3 or 4%.
00:36:58But back in those days, farming was the biggest industry in the country by far.
00:37:08By the time Fianna Fáil comes in, in March 1987, there is no more export credit insurance for Iraq.
00:37:16It's just too dangerous.
00:37:19You couldn't go downtown and buy an insurance policy for some countries because commercial insurance company would say,
00:37:30no, no, it's too risky for us. So there was a state scheme that, therefore, was invaluable to exporters.
00:37:40The scheme covers Irish companies against non-payment for goods sold to unstable countries like Iraq.
00:37:46If the buyer defaults, the government guarantees to pay.
00:37:49So Goodman is desperate to get the government to bring back this export credit insurance.
00:37:58When he meets Charlie Hawley, when he meets Albert Reynolds, export credit insurance, Iraq, that's the big thing.
00:38:06So in all of this story about Goodman and Iraq in the 1980s and into the early 1990s, we have
00:38:13these two realities.
00:38:15One is that the Taoiseach, Charles Hawley, has his own private financial arrangements with the Iraqi regime.
00:38:26The other is that the person who will succeed him as Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, it will turn out later, after
00:38:35he leaves office, that at some point in the 1990s, he will acquire a personal financial stake in an Iraqi
00:38:46oil field from the Iraqi regime.
00:38:49How come we have two successive Fianna Fáil Tichy who turn out to have very, very major financial interests, not
00:39:01just in Iraq, but interests that have to be connected to the Iraqi regime itself?
00:39:10So in March 1987, Albert Reynolds becomes Minister for Industry and Commerce.
00:39:16In April, he meets Larry Goodman to discuss the export credit insurance scheme.
00:39:22Four days after that meeting, despite the advice of all of the officials at his own department, the Department of
00:39:29Finance and the Department of Agriculture, he reintroduces the export credit insurance scheme.
00:39:36The blind businessman would know that doing business with the Iraqi regime at that stage, when the country had been
00:39:46milked dry from the cost of a long-running war, that only a fool would sell into Iraq.
00:39:54Now, of course, Mr. Goodman was no fool, because he had an indemnity from the Irish government.
00:40:01We were the first company to export Irish beef to Iraq. We were the only company to have exported that
00:40:05country for many years.
00:40:06And what I'm saying is, we did the business there initially. We did all the business there for years, and
00:40:12we still do practically all the business there. That's why we were entitled to it.
00:40:18Goodman keeps pushing, and Albert Reynolds says, yeah, OK, OK.
00:40:23And then the amount of money Goodman is getting in these guarantees is going up and up and up. The
00:40:30more he gets, the more he wants.
00:40:33The regular contact was not through the civil service, or not through the normal channels.
00:40:39A direct phone call from Mr. Goodman to Mr. Reynolds at home, and vice versa.
00:40:46Visits by Mr. Goodman directly to Kinseyley to meet the theseship. That was the modus operandi.
00:40:54Albert Reynolds increases the ceiling of export credit insurance to 70 million.
00:40:59He then doubles it to 150 million. And then in October 1988, he increases the scheme to 270 million.
00:41:12Why would any government put itself in a situation where, when a beef tycoon said jump, all the ministers asked
00:41:23was how high?
00:41:25Everything Mr. Goodman sought, government ministers sought, to deliver it.
00:41:36Goodman suddenly starts to benefit from what seems to be an incredibly favourable relationship with Hohe, and with Hohe's Minister
00:41:46for Industry and Commerce, Albert Reynolds.
00:41:48And from that time, pretty much anything Goodman wants, Goodman gets.
00:41:55There was a heavyweight attendance at today's news conference to officially announce the project.
00:42:00Mr. Hohe described it as a major development for the economy.
00:42:03He was joined by the other major protagonists in the deal, Goodman International, the IDA, and the ministers for food
00:42:10and for agriculture.
00:42:11We will have a major investment in our facility in Waterford, which we have recently taken over.
00:42:17People in the industry almost admired him for being able to secure that excess.
00:42:22And it was not just in the case of export credit insurance, it was also securing modernisation grants for his
00:42:28plants.
00:42:29This is the biggest ever project for the meat industry. It follows negotiations which involved the Taoiseach and the Minister
00:42:36for Agriculture and Food with the Goodman Meat Group.
00:42:39In all the investment will be over £200 million.
00:42:46The IDA will be providing £25 million. But why did a successful business group need taxpayers' money if the project
00:42:54was commercially viable?
00:42:56It is very difficult for a private enterprise in this high technology, very competitive world to proceed from its own
00:43:08resources all over the world in this type of area.
00:43:12And indeed in most modern industry, state support is now an accepted part of the situation.
00:43:18It just seemed Charlie Houghy put all his eggs in Larry Goodman's basket in terms of his plan for the
00:43:25food industry was for the IDA to support Larry Goodman,
00:43:30that Larry Goodman's interest and the national interest were the same thing.
00:43:37There are over a thousand shareholders in Westbeak Co-op and the canvassers for Avonmore and Food Industries know every
00:43:42one of them on first name terms now.
00:43:44Their homes are flags on charts and hotel suites and the two private armies visit them more regularly than any
00:43:49political campaigners.
00:43:51Liam Lawler became much more famous subsequently with another tribunal.
00:43:57Where Liam Lawler became really seen as Larry's go-to guy in politics was when Larry did the foray in
00:44:07Westmeath trying to take over the dairy co-op business.
00:44:11Larry Goodman arrived by helicopter. Avonmore's Pat O'Neill was caught in what the local wits claimed was Moat's first
00:44:17ever traffic jam.
00:44:20Honestly, John, what say will you have with Avonmore?
00:44:23Well, what say will I have with Larry Goodman?
00:44:25You'll have as much or as little?
00:44:26None.
00:44:28Liam Lawler's role was to smooth out things, whether it was international negotiation or persuading dairy farmers to sign up
00:44:36to food industries.
00:44:37He was a fixer for Larry.
00:44:44Liam Lawler was a backbench TD for Dublin West.
00:44:50He was never in the cabinet, so he never on the surface wielded a lot of power.
00:44:57But it's pretty clear that Lawler was the ultimate fixer.
00:45:04He would be present really in sort of every little nook and cranny where it seemed like there was an
00:45:13overlap between business interests on the one hand and political power on the other hand.
00:45:22Charles Hawley appointed Liam Lawler as chair of the influential Oireachtas Committee on State Sponsored Bodies.
00:45:28That was a period when many state enterprises were looking at the prospect of being sold.
00:45:35He would have had access as chair of that committee to very sensitive financial information about those companies.
00:45:42The sugar company bosses were clearly delighted with the group's 1988 report, which they publish today.
00:45:48The report shows profits jumping to nearly £12 million, a leap of 38% in a year.
00:45:56Larry Goodman had expressed interest in buying Irish sugar, which was one of those state enterprises.
00:46:04And it later emerged that the person who was protecting the public interest as chair of that committee was also
00:46:10a director of Larry Goodman's company Food Industries.
00:46:15Deputy Lawler again insisted there was no conflict between his membership of this Oireachtas Committee and his position as a
00:46:22director of Food Industries.
00:46:23The committee had been studying the affairs of the sugar company, and food industries have recently expressed an interest in
00:46:29the sugar company.
00:46:30But Mr Lawler was adamant today that he had behaved correctly and never passed down commercially sensitive information to a
00:46:37third party.
00:46:37There is, for instance, no fraud, no share transactions, no insider dealings, no loss to company or exchequer funds, no
00:46:46missing stocks, not so much as a pound of sugar gone astray.
00:46:50As far as I'm concerned, I have dealt with this matter in a very, very detailed and comprehensive way, and
00:46:56at no time has there been any conflict of interest.
00:47:00Following exposure, Liam Lawler resigned as chair of that Oireachtas Committee.
00:47:05It is quite unthinkable that a TD would be in that role in a modern context.
00:47:12You know, Ireland in the 1980s, under Hawi, was just a different planet from today.
00:47:23Roughly at the same time as the whole Irish sugar controversy,
00:47:28we know that Larry Goodman lent Liam Lawler about £600,000 to buy a plot of development land in West
00:47:37Dublin,
00:47:38and that Lawler only repaid £350,000.
00:47:43So there is £250,000, which again is a lot of money.
00:47:49But it does mean that there's a very strong financial link there between Goodman and Lawler.
00:47:55Liam Lawler's particular skills were all quasi-commercial, political, where those two intersect business, investment, planning decisions and so on.
00:48:08Lawler also turns up frequently in Iraq, in Baghdad, where Goodman has very important business interests.
00:48:19We have a situation in which we know that Liam Lawler is in Baghdad seeking to get payments for Goodman
00:48:29from the Saddam Hussein regime,
00:48:31and at least in his own telling of it for other companies as well.
00:48:36It probably is unusual for a backboucher to be operating for a single company.
00:48:40That would not be, I think, normal procedure or the standard that would be expected of, I think, a Member
00:48:47of Parliament.
00:48:54It's Mastermeats that has been the centre of attention during the last fortnight, following the buying out of former owner
00:48:58Pascal Phelan.
00:48:59Phelan fell out with his Jordanian partner, Zachariah El Tahir.
00:49:07Tahir had no interest in the business whatsoever.
00:49:11The bank's concern was not about the financial position of the group, but rather at the quarrels between the two
00:49:18partners.
00:49:18In 1989, we were having a bumper year.
00:49:25So I decided, now I better fix it.
00:49:31We had a share agreement that says he could offer me or I could offer him any price for the
00:49:37shares.
00:49:37And if he offered or I offered 10% more, you bought him, no questions asked.
00:49:45We made the offer, and unbelievably, he countered the offer at 10% more.
00:49:53That was devastation.
00:49:58We were 99.99% sure.
00:50:01We had a good plan.
00:50:03But the one thing we never asked the question for, what have is he stowed for somebody else?
00:50:10Pascal Phelan lost control and ownership of the company that he had set up.
00:50:15And the ultimate buyer was a bit of a mystery for a while.
00:50:19Master meets in Clommel this evening.
00:50:21Just one of the six factories in the £150 million group under new mystery management.
00:50:27Why all the mystery is unclear.
00:50:29It could be that the consortium is acting for someone else.
00:50:33I refused to believe it was Larry Goodman.
00:50:38Because it was just too incredible that the number one would take out the number three in this way.
00:50:46Who do you think is behind it?
00:50:49Well, I can say this to you, that if viewers on television ever get tired of watching Dallas, that RTG
00:50:56might find it appropriate to make a series about the meat industry.
00:51:00Because the meat industry in this country is not only very colourful and populated by extremely colourful characters.
00:51:06But by and large, you can take it that what is actually happening in practice is probably more extraordinary than
00:51:12what the rumours are.
00:51:15The following Monday, a week after the takeover, Nobby Quinn arrives into our head office in Wilton Place.
00:51:23And my sister Anne gives me a phone and he says, you won't believe who's walked in the door.
00:51:26Nobby Quinn, I said, you've got to be a bloody joke of me.
00:51:29And then he denied.
00:51:32Yeah, it could be Larry.
00:51:34Ireland's largest operator, the Goodman Group, insist that they're not behind the purchase of the rival company.
00:51:40They denied it to the government, to the IDA, to the Department of Agriculture.
00:51:47They formally denied it to everybody, including the Fair Trade Commission of Inquiry.
00:51:55I can't speak for the Fair Trade Commission, but certainly the ministers got it wrong.
00:52:01He says that we operate effective control of Master Meats.
00:52:06That's incorrect.
00:52:08Master Meats changed its name to Classic Meats after it was taken over last year.
00:52:13It's the country's third biggest meat processor with four plants.
00:52:16The Department of Industry and Commerce said today that the minister had been pursuing the question of ownership since last
00:52:22December.
00:52:22There's speculation that the Goodman Group may be involved, but the spokesman for Mr. Goodman would make no comment.
00:52:28Well, we asked the Goodman Group to clarify their relationship with Classic Meats, and they told us this afternoon that
00:52:35they had no comment to make.
00:52:37It was very simple.
00:52:40When you added Master Meats business to Larry Goodman's business, there was a clear breach of the monopolies and mergers
00:52:49legislation.
00:52:52The IFA has expressed concern about the Goodman organization taking over the entire Master Meats group.
00:52:58Do you think that there is a danger that Larry Goodman will get too much control of the agriculture industry
00:53:03even now?
00:53:05We see Larry Goodman, if he controls Classic Meats and Anglo-Irish, controlling too much of the meat industry.
00:53:16It was unprecedented, unheard of.
00:53:20It was actually more than that. It was unbelievable. Nobody would believe it.
00:53:31Just after seven o'clock tonight, and with a familiar wave, Mr. Hawi headed off to Oros and Oukteron to
00:53:38ask President Hillary to dissolve the 25th Dáil.
00:53:42In 1989, political parties were in a very vulnerable position. There had been five elections in more or less quick
00:53:48succession.
00:53:49So, two years and two months after forming his second minority administration, Matisic has decided the time is now right
00:53:56to seek a new mandate and a working majority.
00:53:58You're welcome to Maytown.
00:54:00Larry Goodman donated about £300,000 in all to political parties in the 1989 election.
00:54:07It made him the biggest benefactor to Irish democracy at that time.
00:54:13On the day of the election in 1989, Larry Goodman made a £50,000 donation to Fianna Fáil, not an
00:54:21insignificant amount in the context of the economy.
00:54:23And Charles Hawi had requested that that donation be declared anonymous.
00:54:29It became an issue during the 1989 elections.
00:54:33Who owns Master Meat Packers? I couldn't answer.
00:54:36And they thought it was kind of stupid, but I didn't know.
00:54:39We feel that the Irish government has still not found who the beneficial owner of Classic Meats is.
00:54:44It is their duty to do that, and to act accordingly then.
00:54:48I find it extraordinary that Tom Clinton could make a statement like that, that the government of the country couldn't
00:54:54find out who owned a factory like that, you know.
00:54:58It's a symbol of the time that we were living in, and how political it was, and how political it
00:55:04became after that.
00:55:07In July 1989, you had the Progressive Democrat Fianna Fáil government, and Des O'Malley became Minister for Industry and Commerce.
00:55:17Fianna Fáil has to form a coalition with O'Malley, the sort of veteran Fianna Fáil politician who had then founded
00:55:22the Progressive Democrats.
00:55:25Enemy of Charlie Hawi, of course.
00:55:28And O'Malley is very, very concerned about export credit insurance.
00:55:32O'Malley never changed his view of what had gone on in the industry, and that what had gone on was
00:55:40not in the public interest.
00:55:41He was adamant about that.
00:55:44And O'Malley goes into the Department of Industry and Commerce and finds out it's much worse than he even realised.
00:55:52A statement from the department this evening said that 38.4% of the beef insured was sourced outside the
00:55:59state, having been processed either in the north or in Britain.
00:56:03Almost 40% of beef exports under the export credit scheme were being sourced from outside the state.
00:56:11So in essence, the Irish taxpayer was underwriting beef that was coming from Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom.
00:56:19It was a gooboo situation. It was allowed to get out of hand.
00:56:24And then O'Malley moves to cancel the export credit insurance in 1989.
00:56:29Desmond O'Malley confirmed that he had cancelled over £37 million worth of insurance cover granted to the Goodman Company.
00:56:35Too much cover was given to one country for one product for one company.
00:56:39The Irish public has been saved by O'Malley from having this catastrophic debt placed on its shoulders.
00:56:47But it means that Goodman is much, much more exposed.
00:56:53I think that there was a combination of things which turned into the perfect storm for Larry Goodman.
00:56:59He had made very large investments in the stock market and he had borrowed a lot of money to do
00:57:05it.
00:57:06And then, of course, there's a black swan situation.
00:57:12A hundred thousand Iraqi soldiers invaded the Gulf state of Kuwait early today.
00:57:17Not very long after O'Malley cancels the export credit insurance, Saddam Hussein decides to invade Kuwait.
00:57:27Iraq has warned it will turn Kuwait into a graveyard if any country dares challenge the takeover by force.
00:57:36Saddam's invasion of Kuwait then triggers this collapse in all Western support for Iraq.
00:57:44Do you have any sympathy at all for Mr Goodman in his current difficulties?
00:57:47Well, I have sympathy, I suppose, for anybody who has difficulties.
00:57:52But the degree of sympathy is clearly tempered by the extent to which somebody brings difficulties on himself.
00:58:02Yesterday, Goodman's bankers came to Dublin, all 30 of them.
00:58:06A decision to lend or not to lend could no longer be withheld.
00:58:09For by this weekend, Goodman Group would have had no cash and would be unable to continue trading.
00:58:16I didn't get any satisfaction out of it. I'm not made that way.
00:58:21I didn't have any sympathy for him, I can tell you.
00:58:23But I just watched on with my mouth jammed open like everybody else.
00:58:28It was, it was, it was Netflix.
00:58:32There was no comment from Mr Goodman on how he proposes to get out of his current difficulties.
00:58:36The fact that Mr Goodman has called in outsiders to advise him underlines how seriously he views the present situation.
00:58:43I thought he would go to the wall. I thought the numbers are too big to manage.
00:58:50It was disaster. The figure I think was 500 million, which in the early 90s that was, that was a
00:58:58fortune.
00:58:59Goodman owes 460 million pounds to bankers throughout the world.
00:59:05I never ever would have been worried at any time because he, he's too big to feel.
00:59:18You must leave now. Take what you need. You'll think we'll last.
00:59:26But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast.
00:59:35Look out, baby, the saints are coming through.
00:59:44And it's all over now, baby blue.
00:59:50I'm I'm I'm I'm I.
00:59:57I'm I'm.
01:00:02First of all, baby blue.
01:00:02I was.
01:00:02If I don't want to make it.
01:00:05I'm I'm not.
01:00:05I'm not.
01:00:06I'm not.
01:00:06I'm.
01:00:06I'm.
01:00:06You
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