Financier ‘in effect used by the IRA’

THE IRA was almost certainly behind the highly organised robbery of £26.5 million from Northern Bank and Ted Cunningham was used by the IRA to launder at least £3m of it, it was claimed yesterday as the 60-year-old was jailed for 10 years.

Superintendent John Healy said the bank robbery was “almost certainly carried out by the IRA”. And defence senior counsel Ciarán O’Loughlin said Ted Cunningham had no part in the robbery but that in respect of laundering the proceeds “he was in effect used by the IRA”.

Supt Healy reminded Judge Con Murphy of the circumstances of the Northern Bank robbery of December 2004. Assistant manager of the Northern Bank cash centre in Belfast, Kevin McMullan, was at home on the night of December 19, 2004, with his wife, Karen. On the pretext of being police, the bank robbers got into the house. Ms McMullan was blindfolded and taken away from the house as her husband was told that if he didn’t comply fully or if anything went wrong, his wife would be killed.

In this way the robbery succeeded and a major investigation was initiated. The part initially played by the gardaí was the monitoring of movements of known members of the IRA, leading to 44 searches, including one at the home of Ted Cunningham where over £3m from the bank was found in his basement.

Supt Healy said gardaí believe that Cunningham is not and was not in the IRA. Questioned at the Bridewell Garda Station he gave false accounts of receiving the Northern sterling from Bulgarians buying a sand pit in Tullamore.

“When granted an off-camera interview he outlined how he got four tranches of cash in four deliveries from the same unknown man in a Northern-registered car (on different dates in Tullamore and Navan). In total he asserted he received £4.9m,” the superintendent said.

He quoted the accused telling them in that interview: “I came up with the idea to pretend I had a buyer for the pit. In effect I was laundering the money from the Northern Bank by buying the pit in a bogey Bulgarian company name.”

Supt Healy said: “He did retract statements made off-camera and he made serious allegations about members of An Garda Síochána involved in that process.”

Cunningham Jnr, who was given a three-year suspended sentence for his part in the laundering of the £3m, “was merely a pawn in this operation at the behest of his father”, defence senior counsel Tom Creed said, adding that the delay in pleading guilty (the third week of the trial) was due to his father’s influence.

Judge Con Murphy praised Cunningham Jnr for pleading guilty: “Given his circumstances it took courage to plead guilty at the time he did, in effect in defiance of his father.”

The judge said Cunningham Jnr played a minor part and was merely a pawn directed by his father to make some deliveries and to count money. “He was in no way the originator of the crime,” the judge said.

Turning to Ted Cunningham, the judge said the mitigating factors were his age, health and absence of previous convictions.

“He stored money, gave money to people to store, bought cars, used money as security and obtained euro value for Northern sterling. There is no doubt there was premeditation and planning of the crime. In the trial he persevered to the end with a concocted alibi... a reasonably well-constructed alibi, its genesis may have been before the Northern Bank robbery took place.

“He persevered to the end of the trial that various admissions made by the gardaí were made because of illness, sleeplessness, threats or inducements. It was found... by the jury that these admissions were made freely and voluntarily,” Judge Murphy said.

The judge concluded by granting an application from the prosecution to commence an enquiry into the extent of any financial benefit that Ted Cunningham derived from the 10 counts of money-laundering on which he was given concurrent 10-year sentences.