Redmond guilty after £1m bribes

GEORGE REDMOND last night spent his first night in jail after becoming the first public official to have been convicted for corruption in the State.

The former Dublin assistant county and city manager received as much as 1.3 million bribes from land developers during decades of being on the take from developers in return for planning favours.

The historic verdict was the first criminal conviction secured against a person against whom allegations of corruption were made at any of the raft of State tribunals that have been held over the past decade.

The 79-year-old was remanded in custody for sentencing on December 17 next at the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court after being found guilty of accepting a £10,000 bribe from a garage owner. He faces up to two years imprisonment and a fine of 12,000 Redmond's final disgrace yesterday came in the wake of his sensational admissions to the Flood Tribunal, as it was called then, that he had received large payments from major developers over the past three decades.

The former official first came to public attention in February 1999 when he was stopped by CAB officers as he arrived back in Dublin Airport from the Isle of man carrying £300,000. He was fined £7,500 in 2000 after pleading guilty to tax offences.

The conviction represented a major breakthrough in attempts to tackle corruption in Irish public life. Several failed and aborted investigations in the past led to the widespread assumption that it was nigh impossible to secure convictions against those charged with corruption.

The outcome of the case prompted calls for a specialised agency to tackle corruption to be set up immediately, to pursue the assets of politicians and others who have made or received corrupt payments.

The Labour Party urged the Government to reactivate its proposals to set up a corruption assets bureau.

The party's environment spokesperson Eamon Gilmore, said the Government had failed to deliver on the one promise that had been made on the day the report by Mr Justice Flood was published in September 2002 - namely the setting up of a corruption assets bureau.

While welcoming the guilty verdict, Mr Gilmore said that little appeared to have been done as a result of the Flood Report, which found that 'corrupt' payments were made by developers to politicians.

"When the public controversy arising from the publication of the Flood Report died down, the proposal for the new body was quietly dropped. It should now be reactivated," Mr Gilmore said.

Government plans for a corruption assets agency were dropped last September when the Attorney-General Rory Brady expressed concerns about some legal difficulties, as well as the duplication and stetching of resources. It was decided that the Criminal Assets Bureau would get extended powers to pursue politicians and others suspected of corruption.

To that end, the Minister for Justice is now in the process of reviving the Proceed of Crime (Bill) 1999, held up by court challenges to CAB's legal powers.

The Bill is now expected to come before the Oireachtas after Christmas and will include a number of amendments geared towards investigations of corruption.

One specific provision will allow for the seizure and forfeiture of assets arising from a 'bribe'.

In addition, for the first time, the agency will have powers to investigate the beneficial owners of trusts. The investigation work of several Tribunals and inquiries - most notably the Glacken Inquiry into the purchase of a site by Telecom Eireann in the early 1990s - was frustrated because it was not possible to establish the beneficial owners of offshore trusts.

Sources in the Department of Justice said that the amendment on trusts was highly technical but would be included in the legislation.

Mr Redmond was yesterday convicted by a 10-2 majority guilty verdicts on two charges that he received Ir£10,000 from car salesman Mr Brendan Fassnidge as a bribe relating to the sale of a right-of-way from Dublin County Council at the Lucan bypass.

The jury spent six hours and 42 minutes on its deliberations before it returned its verdicts on day-13 of the trial after spending one night in a hotel.

Redmond had denied the two charges. During the trial, Mr Fassnidge told the jury he gave £10,000 cash in a brown envelope in his own home to Redmond when he was trying to buy a strip of County Council land to gain access to the Lucan by-pass where he was building a petrol station.