The trading of advertising space for goods and services was done by way of a London-based media bartering agency called Astus. According to a report in The Sunday Times, invoices from CMS Marketing, a business owned by Irish agent Noel Kelly, and relating to the €75,000 payments to Tubridy, were sent by RTÉ to Astus and paid out of the barter account to his agent.
Last week, the station said that since the controversial payments came to light the barter account has been brought under the control of the RTÉ finance function and specific controls put in place.In a report in the Sunday Independent, an unidentified “industry whistleblower” was quoted as saying that the account used to pay Tubridy had been involved in transactions with advertising agencies totalling €50 million over the past 10 years.
According to the report in the Sunday Times, the cost to RTÉ of the €150,000 paid to Tubridy arising from the two invoices was €230,760, and this included fees paid to other parties as part of the transactions. Media bartering companies trade in media advertising space and goods and services produced by other clients, and charge fees for the transactions they process.
Requests for a comment to Mr Kelly and to Ms Forbes met with no response. There is no suggestion that Astus, which is a major international media bartering business, was aware what lay behind the invoices from CMS Marketing that were used to facilitate the payments to Tubridy. Attempts to get a comment from the company were unsuccessful on Sunday.