A high-profile greyhound owner implicated in a race-fixing scam has demanded the Irish Greyhound Board (IGB) clears his name.
Roscommon businessman Des Whyte has issued a statement in which he asks the IGB to release any information it has on the case.
The call follows an internal report into the June 2009 incident, which found evidence of a scam that operated at the Dundalk track for up to a year. The scheme involved a number of dogs.
Mr Whyte said that, following initial rumours that an imposter dog had been run at the Dundalk track in June 2009, he heard suggestions that he was somehow involved. He then asked the IGB to clear his name, but in the last three years has got no satisfaction.
“It was brought to my attention that my name was being mentioned on a greyhound internet site,” Mr Whyte said in a letter to the Irish Examiner today.
“The indications were that something fishy had gone on and I was in someway implicated.”
The scam, which was detected by management at Dundalk immediately after the June 2009 race, involved the falsification of race records and the running of ringers that were far better than the listed opposition.
In the race that exposed the scam, a novice called Mays Hurryonboy came within a fraction of a second of beating the track record.
The dog’s trial records had been fabricated by copying results from other runners.
Rumours circulated that the winner was Oran Classic, a dog owned by Mr Whyte which won over €80,000 in prize money in its career. The rumour arose was because it was an unusual blue-coloured dog, with white socks and a derby-standard time.
Mr Whyte, who sold Sierra Communications with his business partners in 2007 for €52m, owns Oran Classic.
However, race records for Oran Classic show that he was not in Mr Whyte’s care in the years leading up to the race, unlike runners which he trains himself.
Mr Whyte’s statement said he asked the IGB to clarify the situation as soon as the speculation surfaced.
“In order to ease my conscience somewhat, I would like to know if in fact there was another blue dog around this time, in the British Isles who was capable of doing that time?” his statement asked.
“In my case I simply asked that they could simply say, after their exhaustive investigation, is that I was or was not involved.”
In January, the contents of a devastating report into the Dundalk scam were revealed. In a statement to the Irish Examiner at the time, the IGB said its board had met and decided to adopt the report and implement its recommendations.
Three months later, it has still to publish the report and it has not responded to requests by the Dundalk track for a copy of the report.
When Mr Whyte’s call was put to the IGB, it said: “No comment pending the publication of the report.”
Source: The Irish Examiner
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