Home thoughts from abroad. Let's hear it for three hardy bucks who made this country what it is. These lads must now plough lonely furrows abroad, but at least they are still a part of our lives.

First up, we have Jim Kennedy. On Tuesday last I walked into Court 16 of the Four Courts and saw a ghost. There he was, surrounded by his family, Mr Kennedy, the elusive pimpernel. Our eyes met across the courtroom and Jim winked at me, which was a bit of a shock because we'd never met before.

Jim was back in town to claim his loot. For the last decade he was holed up abroad, refusing to come home to answer questions about planning corruption before the Mahon Tribunal, or to help the gardaí with their inquiries. Jim is in line to pick up the guts of €12m for land in south county Dublin that was rezoned in great controversy. The M50 motorway runs through the land, which was conveniently and controversially rezoned a few years before the road was built. And on Tuesday, there was Kennedy back in the jurisdiction, looking the business.

The CAB says that Jim's company managed to get the lands in Carrickmines rezoned by "corrupt conduct", carried out on his behalf by Frank Dunlop. Frankie has served an 18-month sentence in relation to the corruption, but Jim says it had nothing to do with him. The court must decide whether or not Kennedy was involved, and this in turn will determine whether he gets to pick up the serious bucks. If we weren't liable for the millions, it would be great craic altogether.

But back to me and Jim. Although we never met, for years I pined for him in print. Covering the tribunal, his name regularly came up, and I wondered aloud whether he would ever come home, because his absence was adding to the huge tribunal costs, to be paid out of the citizens' pockets. Those were the days when some of us working at tribunals saw no reason to believe that the moral degradation on display was a thing of the past. But nobody wanted to listen to that oul' stuff. The country was awash with funny money and a good time was there to be had.

Anyway, at a break in proceedings on Tuesday, Jim was walking past when he issued a loopy grin and stuck out a warm paw. "How are you," says he to me. "I've heard all about you."

Was he taking the piss? Letting me know that I was a deluded fool if I believed that highlighting his activities would have had any real affect on the impunity he enjoyed.

"Welcome home," says I. "We missed you."

"Ah now, come on…" says he, as if I had hit him below the belt. And with that, he was gone, but not very far. Within an hour, the boys from the CAB felt his collar and dragged him in.

On Friday, Kennedy was charged with 16 counts of corruption.

Another man who left for entirely different reasons, but retains interests in this septic isle, is financier Derek Quinlan. Back in the day, he borrowed recklessly, put together consortiums of masters of the universe, and reaped obscene profits for all involved. Once the foul stuff hit the fan, he was out through the gap, relocating to Geneva, far from the madding crowd. He owes our bank, Anglo, €300m. He made the Nama top 10. His debts have been socialised into your pockets.

Imagine my shock when I read in the Irish Times a few weeks back that Derek is a director of a company which has won a state contract to collect unpaid court fines. The company, Tazbell, employs "pro-active contact attempts" to get the court's money. Quinlan is a director, but his wife is a shareholder. Sound familiar? If poor old Derek was the one holding the shares, somebody could go after it on our behalf. But conveniently, he doesn't.

If you don't pay your TV licence because you've lost your job on account of the excesses of Derek and the mates, and you can't pay a fine, Derek's outfit will come after you with their pro-active contact attempts. Derek will make money out of your hardship, while he lies up in Geneva, rebuilding his empire. He owes us €300m, which we will never see, yet his family prosper on the back of the misfortune to befall the most vulnerable who can't pay court fines.

He's another man who will spawn a dynastic fortune, passing on great wealth to his kids, just as he passed on his debts to ours.

All of which brings us to another son of the old sod lost to emigration. Last Sunday, I cried tears of sympathy when I read about poor David Drumm's plight in Cape Cod. He told of his victimhood, how he did nothing wrong, how, get this, his kids didn't see much of their cousins now that they had to live abroad. How low can some of these people go?

On Friday week last, he filed for bankruptcy in Massachusetts, saving himself a trip over here for a civil case being taken to force him to cough up €8m he owes us. Presumably, if he had to show up for that, the cops would have used the opportunity to drag him in for questioning.

Then on Tuesday, it emerged that Drumm was using his stateside bankruptcy in an attempt to put his Malahide mansion beyond the reach of Anglo's efforts to get our money back.

You might think that having wreaked such havoc on our lives, the least he could do is simply hand over the goddamn house. But no, the impulse to grab is stronger than ever.

So it goes with our exiled hardy bucks. They left to escape the small minded, bitter natives who bitched and moaned about how they had acquired such great wealth. But at least they retain an interest in their homeland, reaching back in to ransack whatever they can while the citizens fume impotently. Up the Republic.

mclifford@tribune.ie