‘Bizarre features’ in money-laundering case

TED CUNNINGHAM’S counsel asked yesterday if the prosecution was suggesting that Phil Flynn was a notorious scumbag and that by association, Cunningham was a money-launderer.

Ciarán O’Loughlin posed this strongly worded question at the end of the defence’s closing address to the jury at Cork Circuit Criminal Court, where Ted Cunningham, aged 60, of Woodbine Lodge, Farran, Co Cork, is on trial on 10 charges of money-laundering arising out of the investigation of the robbery of £26.5 million from the Northern Bank in Belfast on December 20, 2004.

Mr O’Loughlin said there were bizarre features to the prosecution case, including the way former chairman of Bank of Scotland (Ireland) Phil Flynn was referred to.

“Phil Flynn is like an elephant in this room, constantly being referred to… Detective Chief Superintendent Tony Quilter says he (Cunningham) has got a fear of Mr Flynn. Mr Flynn is a director of Chesterton Finance. Mr Cunningham is still trying to get investment into Chesterton, though he is not a director as long as this case is proceeding.

“Superintendent Quilter said he had no interest in Mr Flynn… What about the burgeoning fascination Mr O’Connell (prosecution counsel) had for Mr Flynn, asking Mr Cunningham when did you meet Mr Flynn, where did you meet him?

“Is it being said (by the prosecution) that he (Mr Flynn) is a notorious scumbag and if he is a scumbag Mr Ted Cunningham must be a money-launderer?

“He (Mr Flynn) is there like an elephant in the room and nothing of evidential value turns on it,” said Mr O’Loughlin.

He said the jurors would be reflecting in years to come about the verdict and that in the future Cunningham might be a famous banker in Bulgaria.

“You might say, yes Mr Cunningham was a bit of a scamp and he behaved in the oddest of ways,” but he said they should acquit him because there was no evidence on which they could convict him.

Counsel said that Tom O’Connell (prosecution counsel) seemed to be taken aback and tickled by a letter from a firm of lawyers called Dynasty in Kazakhstan demanding the repayment of £3m to Bulgarian businessmen.

Mr O’Loughlin said that strange and bizarre though it might have seemed it was a demand for money.

He said the State had ample resources to investigate it with a view to proving it was in some way false but had not done so, therefore the jury could take it to be a true document.

Also bizarre was the fact that an interview in February and several voluntary interviews in September were not videotaped, adding that the jury was now being asked to cherry-pick the parts of interviews the prosecution liked and to ignore all the other bits.

He said there was no proof that the money found in Cunningham’s house in Farran or money given by Cunningham to John Sheehan in Ballincollig, Dan Joe Guerin, the car dealer, or the Douglas jewellers in Tullamore, had come from the Northern Bank robbery.