US trial of Cork man on fraud charges postponed

A Cork businessman due to go on trial for fraud has had his trial postponed until September.

Jerry Shanahan, from Carrigaline, Co Cork, is due to go on trial for a second time on charges relating to a corporate scandal at the Enterasys software giant that wiped more than $1 billion (€759.5 million) from the company's stock price.

Yesterday, his lawyer, Andrew Good, argued that Mr Shanahan did not have enough time to prepare a defence.

In court papers, Mr Good claimed that Mr Shanahan's life was left in limbo while prosecutors decided whether to retry him. He said this delay had affected Mr Shanahan's ability to find work in Ireland.

Last December, a jury acquitted Mr Shanahan on a charge of falsifying corporate records but failed to agree to five other security fraud charges.

Mr Shanahan is the only one of five former Enterasys executives not to be convicted of a charge in that trial. The others are due to be sentenced in the next week.

In a separate case, the US Securities and Exchange Commission has filed civil charges against 10 former Cabletron and Enterasys executives, including Mr Shanahan.

The commission alleges that the executives had falsified figures going back to March 2000, more than a year before Enterasys was spun off from Rochester-based Cabletron.