A COUPLE are opposing a High Court application by the Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab) for an order allowing the bureau to seize their family home, a car, a diamond ring worth €6,100 and a quantity of cash on grounds that these constitute the proceeds of crime.
Cab claims Andrew Wall (34) is a member of a Traveller crime gang known as the “Cock Wall” clan which, it is claimed, travels the country committing robberies and burglaries.
He has 11 previous convictions, including one for manslaughter and others for possession of firearms and stolen jewellery.
Cab claims Mr Wall bought the family home at Piercetown, Newbridge, Kildare, and left the vendor €100,000 short of the purchase price but, as a result of being threatened by Mr Wall, the vendor was too scared to make a complaint until years later.
Mr Wall and his wife Ellen are opposing Cab’s application for an order allowing Cab seize, for the benefit of the exchequer, their home, an 18 carat diamond ring, a VW golf car, and cash sums of and €10,900 and £1,180 seized during a search of their home on July 6th, 2007.
The hearing of evidence concluded yesterday and Mr Justice Kevin Feeney adjourned the case for legal submissions next month.
Cab claims the couple have no visible means of support but exhibit signs of wealth – including the regular purchase of cars using fictitious names and decoration of their home to a very high standard – which are consistent with having a readily available source of cash.
An examination of their bank accounts by a forensic accountant showed a total of €416,462 was put through them between 2002 and 2007 while they had no known sources of income, the court heard.
In evidence, the former Cab chief bureau officer, John O’Mahoney, now Assistant Garda Commissioner, said it was three to four years after the event, and only after he was approached by Cab, that the vendor of the Piercetown house made a statement relating to the sale. In an affidavit, a Cab officer said the man who sold the Piercetown house to the Walls in 2004 agreed a deal that Mr Wall would officially pay €140,000 and give him a further €100,000 in cash.
That deal went “horribly wrong”, the officer said.
The vendor was going through divorce proceedings and was in arrears on his mortgage when Mr Wall suggested the €100,000 “under the table” deal, the officer said.
The vendor’s former boss had agreed to go to a hotel with Mr Wall where the bag of money was counted while the vendor went to his solicitor’s office to close the sale for €100,000.
The vendor had completed the sale but his former boss then phoned him to say Mr Wall and another man who had accompanied Mr Wall to the hotel had “disappeared” with the money, the officer said.
In evidence, Ellen Wall said the price agreed for the Piercetown house was €140,000, not €240,000 as Cab had claimed. She said she knew nothing about the other €100,000.
The bulk of the €140,000 purchase price, paid in cash, came from a €118,000 wedding gift from her great aunt Bridget Delaney, she said.
She believed her aunt accumulated the money through a lifetime of selling second-hand clothes and bric-a-brac door-to-door in Ballyfermot, Dublin.
She agreed, before buying the house in Piercetown, she was receiving €950 a month in rent allowance but had not declared she had the €118,000 which she said she kept in a wardrobe of her rented house.
The diamond ring worth €6,100 was an engagement ring given to her by her husband, she told the court.
The money for a €10,000 watch which she bought for her mother came from a €63,000 personal injuries settlement she received in 1995, Ms Wall said.
A receipt from Clane hospital for €8,000 related to cosmetic surgery, found in her home during the search by the Cab, was “private and personal”, the court heard.