High Court to rule on Sean FitzPatrick’s application to stop criminal trial

The High Court will rule today on an application by former Anglo Irish Bank chairman Seán FitzPatrick to stop his criminal trial going ahead at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

Mr FitzPatrick (66) has sought an injunction against the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to prohibit or restrain the prosecution.

He is facing 27 charges, including making a misleading, false or deceptive statement to auditors and of furnishing false information from 2002 to 2007. He has pleaded not guilty.

Concerns about the effect of the separate trial of three former Anglo officials were raised at the Circuit Court before Judge Martin Nolan.

Tiarnan O’Mahoney, Bernard Daly and Aoife Maguire were jailed in July for trying to hide accounts from the Revenue Commissioners between March 2003 and December 2004.

Mr FitzPatrick’s legal team had argued he could not get a fair trial in the wake of the publicity surrounding that case. But Judge Nolan rejected that application and said the trial should go ahead on October 5th.

Bernard Condon SC, for Mr FitzPatrick, told Mr Justice Michael Moriarty in the High Court yesterday he was seeking an injunction to protect the rights of his client to a fair trial.

Injunction

He said he was seeking a permanent injunction to prevent the trial ever going ahead, or else, a limited injunction, until at least October 2016.

Alternatively, he asked the court for an order quashing Judge Nolan’s refusal to adjourn the trial.

Mr Condon said Mr FitzPatrick wanted what everyone in the State was entitled to – a fair trial before an impartial jury. He said he was asking for a permanent injunction because the publicity was so awful it could never be remedied.

Incredibly damaging things had been said about Mr FitzPatrick with impunity and reported with absolute privilege, and an “air of vengeance” had been stoked by the media. A warning to a jury to ignore publicity would not be sufficient, Mr Condon said.

He told the court that all of the “Anglo trials” were listed out into the future, with one listed for 2017, and the “fade factors” were in-built into the listing system. Through happenstance, Mr FitzPatrick’s trial was to occur after the trial of the three officials.

Unfavourable publicity

Paul O’Higgins SC, for the DPP, told the judge that trials did not, and could not, occur in circumstances that were completely sterile. It was true there had been a large quantity of unfavourable publicity, but it did not deal with the facts of what Mr FitzPatrick was “actually supposed to have done”.

He also said it was not correct to say the Anglo trials had been organised to allow for a fade factor. It was “unrealistic” to suggest the fade factor “was a factor in this case in the way it might be in some others”.

Mr O’Higgins said matters would have to be dealt with by clear and cogent direction to the jury.

There would be no time when the trial would take place in a vacuum, he said. He queried whether those who remembered the publicity in six weeks’ time would have forgotten it in a year.

“There is no perfect time for this case to take place,” Mr O’Higgins said. “The trial can go ahead fairly in October.”

Mr Justice Moriarty said that he would deliver his judgment today.

He restricted reporting of certain aspects of the case.