THE Centre for Public Inquiry (CPI), the controversial anti-corruption watchdog, has been wound up following threats from a property company to sue the directors if they published a report into its dealings in Dublin’s docklands.

Treasury Holdings, one of the country’s biggest developers, has confirmed that legal letters were sent to the directors of the CPI following a story in The Sunday Times last December revealing that the CPI was investigating a number of transactions in docklands.

The threat was the last straw for CPI directors, who have been under fire since the institute was established last February. After criticisms from Michael McDowell, the justice minister, the CPI’s financial backer, Chuck Feeney, withdrew his funding last year and no new finance was found.

The CPI closed its Great Strand Street offices this weekend with all outstanding bills, and redundancy payments for staff, paid out of what was left of last year’s funding.

The institute finally decided it could not go on after Treasury Holding’s warning letter. Issued by Arthur Cox solicitors, it warned that all directors of the CPI would be held personally responsible if any defamatory details about Treasury were made public.

The directors had sought to have a €1m legal fund set up to cover the cost of such defamation lawsuits brought by people the CPI investigated.

“The CPI had done two reports and a view was taken that there was a libel liability, no matter how carefully the reports were compiled,” an institute source said.

“It was requested that a sum of money be made available for defamation, but as far as I know that was never implemented or even put to the American investors. It was overtaken by other events.”

“It will now wind up and just vanish,” another CPI source said. “A whole group of people have lost their jobs, but what else could you do? There was no money.

“Various interesting operations are in progress which will never see the light of day because people are afraid to be sued for libel.”

The future of the CPI was in doubt once its four-year $4m (€3.3m) funding from Feeney, an Irish-American philanthropist, was cut off in early December. Feeney lost patience with the CPI after it decided to stand by Frank Connolly, the executive director, despite evidence that he had travelled to Colombia with an IRA leader on a false passport.

Feargus Flood, a retired High Court judge, was the chair of the CPI and among its directors were Enda McDonagh, a former professor at NUI Maynooth, Damien Kiberd, a broadcaster and Sunday Times columnist, and Greg O’Neill, a solicitor.

The CPI’s investigation into property transactions in Dublin’s docklands was to be its third report. Its first investigation was on the amount of public money spent on restoring Trim Castle in Meath, and its second was a critical analysis of Shell’s gas pipeline in Co Mayo. This annoyed the government, which was awaiting its own expert analysis on the safety of the pipeline when the CPI published its report.

McDowell met Feeney last year to brief him about Connolly’s background. During the meeting the justice minister showed the Irish-American millionaire an application for a false passport allegedly made by Connolly. McDowell’s assertion that the CPI director had travelled to Colombia with a senior IRA terrorist in early 2001 led Feeney to withdraw his support from the centre.

The Director of Public Prosecutions has decided not to bring charges against Connolly.

The CPI began an investigation into property transactions in Dublin’s docklands, including a deal involving the Dublin Port Company (DPC), and other developments including Treasury Holdings’ joint venture with CIE on Spencer Dock.

The government has already come under pressure to explain why the state-owned DPC, chaired by former councillor Joe Burke, a political associate of Bertie Ahern, the taoiseach, did not go through a tender procedure before entering into a joint venture with private operators to develop a 32-acre site.

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