Money-laundering accused gives further evidence

A Cork man being tried on money-laundering charges in a case arising from the 2004 Northern Bank robbery today told a court that a Garda chief had wanted him to "rubberstamp" the view that his business partner and former Bank of Scotland (Ireland) boss, Phil Flynn, was behind the crime.

However the accused, Ted Cunningham, said he was so tired and confused during interrogation that he would have agreed that Mother Teresa was his sister.

Cunningham said he was told that gardaí would leak it to the media that he named names and that the IRA would put a bullet in his head and that his family would suffer the same fate.

Cunningham, (aged 60), of Woodbine Lodge, Farran, Co Cork, denies 20 charges of money-laundering in a case that arises out of the investigation of the robbery of £26.5m (€28.6m) from the Northern Bank in Belfast on December 20, 2004.

Cunningham said he was frightened in the Bridewell where he and his wife, Cathy Armstrong, were being questioned separately in February 2005.

“A rat in a corner will do anything to get out, that is all I wanted to do – get out of that hellhole… My attitude to anything is to say, yeah, yeah, yeah. I must have said, yeah, yeah, yeah, a hundred thousand times," he told the court.

“At that stage I had decided that all I was interested in was getting Cathy out, I didn’t care what I said, it wasn’t a chit-chat, there was banging on tables. If they asked me or told me Mother Teresa was my sister I would have agreed with that,” he said, adding that he had given up mentally and physically, due to lack of sleep, interrogation and a serious nosebleed condition.

He said Detective Chief Superintendent Tony Quilter told him: “If I did not co-operate I was in deep sh**.”

He said Det. Chief Supt. Quilter told him he had a photograph of him with Phil Flynn and IRA people.

“I knew that was not true, it was said to me that they knew who robbed the bank above in the North, they knew Phil Flynn had an involvement in it.

“It was said to me I was only a pawn and that Phil Flynn was the main man, if I was to name Phil Flynn as the person behind it, he (Det. Chief Supt. Quilter) said they knew all of this, they basically only wanted me to rubberstamp it.”

Cunningham said the money found at his house had come from Bulgarian business people in October 2004 – at least three months before the Northern Bank robbery – and that he was never in the IRA.

The trial continues.