Trail of misfortune continues to follow Dublin businessman

Misfortune seems to follow Dublin businessman Mr Tom Forde wherever he goes, and those affected are usually others.

This week Mr Forde sent a fax to the Criminal Court in Lugano, Switzerland, informing the judge he would not be taking up her invitation to come and give evidence.

The court had promised Mr Forde immunity from prosecution from the charges being faced by the defendants - Mr Paul Murphy (40), a native of Northern Ireland with an address in Bray, Co Wicklow, and Mr Andrew Winters from Surrey, England.

Mr Murphy is a former business associate of Mr Forde's. The Lugano court heard Mr Murphy and Mr Forde were involved in financial transactions totalling £4.5 million (€5.7 million). The money was brought in 21 caseloads of cash into Switzerland in 1997/1998, from Italy, the US and Britain, before being lodged in Swiss banks for transfer to accounts in the US. It forms one core aspect of the prosecution's case. The transactions occurred under Mr Murphy's direction. The prosecution's case is that the money belonged to Colombian cocaine dealers. Mr Murphy was introduced to Mr Winters by Mr Forde, but matters turned sour. "Mr Forde thought he was being cut out of the business and said he wanted half of Murphy's business," Mr Winters told the court. The three men met in Dublin in December 1998, but the meeting broke up after Mr Forde began making threats, he said.

Mr Forde told The Irish Times he rejected evidence that he demanded half of the $400,000 commission the two defendants were getting for their work. "I have never done business with Mr Winters and had only limited business with Mr Murphy," he said. He said no meeting in Dublin between the three men ever took place. The second leg of the Lugano case involves the Hibo trust, an Irish-registered trust of which Mr Forde and Mr Murphy were co-trustees. Cash totalling $6 million (€6.43 million) belonging to the trust went "missing" from a bank in Colombia, Banco Andino, to which it had been transferred, apparently by mistake. Mr Forde said the money was transferred in the name of the trust to an account of Banco Andino's with Citibank, in New York, "but kept going". Three London-based lawyers who were sent to Colombia to find out what had happened were turned back at the border, he said.

The trust money belonged to two German businessmen who owned the Irish-registered trust. It has since emerged the money was embezzled by one of them from a German company. Mr Forde did not want to discuss the Swiss court case in detail. It seems statements from Mr Forde concerning the cash brought into Switzerland, supported Mr Murphy's evidence that, when handling the cash, he had no reason to believe it was not legitimate money.

However, Mr Forde, the Lugano court has heard, was allegedly operating as a secret informant for the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the US Inland Revenue Service, and US Customs and Excise. A second version of events given by him to the drugs agency is much less helpful to Mr Murphy's case.

Mr Forde appeared as a prosecution witness in a drugs case in Miami, Florida, two years ago. That case involved a man named Faught, who has a drugs record going back to 1977. "They [the DEA] asked me to help and I did," he told The Irish Times. "I didn't need to ask for immunity or anything like that."

Prosecutors from Switzerland travelled to the US to observe the case and noted Mr Forde's evidence. Faught was convicted.

It is the prosecution's case in the Lugano hearing that the money brought into Switzerland belonged to Faught. The prosecution has had some of the cash analysed and found it contained traces of cocaine. However, Mr Murphy's defence counsel has argued that this proves nothing, given the prevalence of cocaine in society.

In his fax to the court this week, Mr Forde said he was not well. He suggested he might give evidence to an Irish judge or by way of videolink with the Swiss court. It is thought unlikely the offer will be taken up. This is not the first time Mr Forde has featured in stories concerning dubious transactions and missing money. In the early 1990s, a Norwegian bank took a case in the Dublin High Court seeking recompense for millions of pounds it claimed it had lost as a result of a confidence trick involving Mr Forde.

A Norwegian fish company, Broden Johnsen Albestad, had been approached by an Irish "businessman" who presented himself as being interested in buying fish for sale to Nigeria. The approach was made in 1986 by a James "Danger" Beirne, from Co Leitrim. Mr Forde was part of the group set up to effect the confidence trick, Mr Justice Morris said in the High Court in 1992. Another was a Mr Joseph Grimson, Cedarwood Gardens, Dublin.

The Norwegian Bank used by the fish company, Tromso Sparebanken, ended up with useless promissory notes for £12 million, which had been signed by a bank official with Northern Bank, now National Irish Bank. It took its case in the High Court against Northern Bank and the court ruled that Northern Bank should pay the Norwegian bank £6 million. The Irish bank appealed but the matter was settled in 1996, before the appeal was heard.

Late last year it emerged that Mr Forde was an advisory director of a US Internet company, ePawn. The former Taoiseach, Mr Albert Reynolds, is listed on the company's website as its other advisory director. The listed Irish recruitment firm, Marlborough International, was in merger talks with e-Pawn until a number of e-Pawn's directors were arrested in the US as part of an FBI crackdown on the infiltration of Wall Street by organised crime.

Mr Forde said he resigned from his position as advisory director to e-Pawn "some time ago". When it was put to Mr Forde that he'd had a "colourful" business career in which many dealings had gone awry, he said: "Certainly, certain things have gone awry but others didn't; they were very successful. Sometimes some things go wrong." No record could be found in the Companies Registration Office of existing companies of which Mr Forde is a director. Prior to the disclosure that he was involved in e-Pawn, it had been thought he was involved in selling imported Japanese cars from a business in Tallaght, Co Dublin. The companies associated with this business have since been dissolved.

Beirne, Mr Forde's associate in the bogus 1980s fish deal, was jailed by the Old Bailey in London in 1999 for 18 years for his part in an attempt to import cocaine worth £6.5 million sterling (€10.2 million) from Peru into Britain. Mr Winters has previously served a prison term in Switzerland for his part in a failed attempt at smuggling emeralds from Venezuela. Mr Murphy has been in jail in Switzerland since late 1998. His case is expected to last into next week and his fate will be decided by a simple majority of the seven-person jury.