Three former officials of Anglo Irish Bank have gone on trial charged with attempting to hide accounts connected to the bank's chairman, Seán FitzPatrick, from the Revenue Commissioners.

Former company secretary Bernard Daly, 65, from Whitehall in Dublin, former chief operations officer Tiarnan O’Mahoney, 54, from Enniskerry, Co Wicklow and Aoife Maguire, 60, from Kilmainham deny all the charges against them.

Prosecuting counsel Dominic McGinn told the jurors that the trial is about tax and fraud.

He said there would be no punch-ups, no car chases, it would be long and parts would be boring but that did not make it any less important.

Mr McGinn said in 2003 and 2004, there was a concerted effort among some people at Anglo Irish Bank to conceal accounts connected to Mr FitzPatrick, from the Revenue Commissioners, so as not to pay tax that might or might not be owing.

Revenue was carrying out an audit of Anglo in the context of an examination of bogus non resident accounts in all banks.

Mr Daly, Mr O'Mahoney and Ms Maguire are all accused of a conspiracy to delete references to two accounts in the name of Mr Fitzpatrick's brother-in-law, John Peter O'Toole, from the bank's core computer database.

Mr Daly and Mr O'Mahoney deny leaving Mr O'Toole's name off a list provided to Revenue of people who held non resident accounts with a balance of more than €100,000 in 1995.

Mr O'Mahoney and Ms Maguire deny attempting to delete six other accounts, connected to Mr FitzPatrick from Anglo's core banking system.

The trial is expected to last until the end of next month.

The names of the accounts are: Lock Ltd/Suzie Ltd, Carnahalla Ltd/Suzie Ltd, Lock Ltd, Carnahalla Ltd, Triumvirate Properties Ltd and Seán FitzPatrick Trust/Crohan O'Shea Trust.

Charges relate to payment of tax and bank records

Mr McGinn told the six men and six women on the jury that the charges faced by the three accused were all connected to the payment of tax and bank records.

He said in the late 1990s-early 2000s, Revenue was looking at non-resident accounts in all banks to assess their liability for DIRT tax.

Revenue was concerned some non-resident accounts were bogus and the account holders were actually residents who should have been paying tax.

Revenue contacted all banks and asked them to indicate what non-resident accounts they had.

Anglo Irish Bank replied that it had no such accounts.

However, when Revenue declared a tax amnesty, several Anglo account holders declared that they did have bogus non-resident accounts.

Revenue decided to conduct an audit of Anglo, the court was told.

The Revenue Commissioners asked for three separate lists from the bank - they wanted a list of non-resident account holders where the balance of the account was more than €100,000 in March 1990, 1995 and 1999.

The court heard a special team was set up in Anglo to deal with this request.

Mr Daly was in charge of the team, Mr O'Mahoney had a supervisory role and the prosecution alleges that Mr O'Mahoney appointed Ms Maguire to the team to report directly to him.

The prosecution alleges that Mr Daly and Mr O'Mahoney omitted the account of Mr O'Toole from the list of non-resident account holders in 1995 who had a balance of more than €100,000.

The court heard there were a number of financial transactions from Mr FitzPatrick's own accounts into the account in Mr O'Toole's name.

The prosecution said omitting the name was a deliberate act on the part of the bank to hide the connection with Mr FitzPatrick.

The prosecution said when members of the team refused to omit a name from the list, they were reassigned elsewhere and in 2004, there was an attempt to delete information from the bank's core banking system.

Mr McGinn said staff in the IT department were instructed to delete any references to two accounts in Mr O'Toole's name, as well as six other accounts.

The court was told the IT staff were uncomfortable about making these deletions and archived the references to the accounts instead of deleting them.

The prosecution said the attempts to have those accounts deleted were motivated by the connection between the accounts and Mr FitzPatrick.

It added that Mr FitzPatrick had involvement in all the accounts to a greater or lesser extent.

The court said the accounts were used for various purposes, including trading in shares, or managing property and were held in the Isle of Man or in Jersey, where the tax regimes would be lighter than in this jurisdiction.

Mr McGinn said there would not be any smoking gun in the case, but he said after examining all the evidence, the jurors would be satisfied of the accused men and woman's involvement in the offences with which they were charged.

He told them they had to assess the information against each of the three accused separately.