Ireland pays tribute to late Irish businessman Ben Dunne

Ireland pays tribute to late Irish businessman Ben Dunne. It is reported that he died at the age of 74 in Dubai. Former boss of Ireland's Dunn's Stores empire, he was known as a giant of Irish business.

He was born in Cork in 1949, the youngest of six children of Nora Maloney and Ben Dunne Senior, who founded the Dunn's Stores chain of supermarkets. He worked in the family business from a young age and later became the director of the company along with his brothers.

He was mired in controversy during his lifetime, and in 1992 he was arrested in Florida and admitted to paying ex-T Shek Charles Haughey. Also in 1981, while on a trip to visit a company outlet, Mr Dunne was abducted by the Provisional IRA and held hostage in Co Armagh for seven days. Finally, a ransom was paid, securing his release.

Mr Dunn returned to the family enterprise, but returned to the headlines a decade later when he was arrested in 1992 for possessing and soliciting cocaine while on a golf holiday in Florida, USA.

Immediately after the incident, the businessman committed to making changes in his lifestyle. But the scandal caused a rift within the family business and the Duns Stores links eventually ended after his sister Margaret Heffernan bought a stake in the company for more than IR£100m.

The controversy escalated when journalist Sam Smith obtained records of payments from Mr Dunn's business accounts. The deals included some payments to prominent politicians, including the then Fine Gael minister Michael Lowry and former Taoiseach Charlie Haughey.

By 1997, the payments inquiry led to the establishment of the McCracken Tribunal and the resulting Moriarty Tribunal into financial problems involving politicians, which dominated political discourse for more than a decade. In his evidence at the tribunal, Mr Dunn confirmed the transactions.

As the controversy began to subside, Mr. Dunn pursued several new business ventures in later years. The most successful and high-profile was his Ben Dunn Gyms enterprise, which sought to tap into the burgeoning Irish fitness market. But despite his subsequent success, past controversies have not been far from view, with the businessman discussing his past experiences in numerous TV, radio and newspaper interviews.