The former head of an investment company which collapsed owing Irish investors around £7 million sterling (€11.3 million) walked free from court yesterday after judges upheld his appeal. Cork-born Mr Finbarr Ross (54) said outside the Court of Appeal in Belfast: "I am sorry for all the people who lost money, but no one lost more money in this than I did." He said he was "absolutely delighted to be vindicated at long last".

The prosecution case at his original trial at Belfast Crown Court a year ago was that he had encouraged people to put money into International Investments Ltd - a Gibraltar-based company which he founded - when he must have known the firm was insolvent. The firm collapsed in 1984.

Mr Ross was sentenced to 21/2 years' imprisonment after he was convicted of three counts of deception by unlawfully procuring investments. He lodged an immediate appeal and was freed on bail within a short time, after his lawyers told a judge he would have been due for release within days had the time he was in custody in the US, fighting extradition, been taken into account.

At the appeal last month Mr Arthur Harvey QC, who appeared for Mr Ross along with Mr Peter Irvine, submitted that Lord Justice McCollum's charge to the trial jury was "so unbalanced as to be unfair".

Mr Harvey referred to the evidence of prosecution witness Mr Ronald Vincent, a corporate consultant, and said the trial judge had told the jury of important conflicts between his evidence and that of Mr Ross, without referring to the cross-examination which resolved the conflicts.

In yesterday's reserved judgement, the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Robert Carswell, who heard the appeal with Lord Justice Nicholson and Mr Justice Coghlin, said they had to determine whether the Crown case was so strong that the judge's omission did not affect the safety of the conviction. "We have concluded that we could not regard the case as being of that strength," Sir Robert said.

"We consider the jury would have been quite entitled to find against the appellant, for there were many indicia pointing towards his guilt.

"There were, however, matters upon which he was entitled to rely in his defence, and it was necessary for the safety of the conviction that the jury be sufficiently directed on them. In our opinion, the material contained in Mr Vincent's cross-examination was relevant to some of those matters and it was necessary that they be put before the jury. We accordingly consider that the conviction cannot be upheld."

Sir Robert said a retrial would normally be ordered where a conviction was set aside due to misdirection of a jury. But as the events took place a considerable time ago and there was a dearth of documentary evidence - together with the fact that Mr Ross had two trials and spent time in prison in the US and Northern Ireland - they had decided simply to quash the conviction.

Afterwards Mr Rice said he had instructions to consider whether Mr Ross had any redress by way of compensation for the time he spent in prisons in the US and Northern Ireland.