Prosecution ‘deliberately confused’ jury in Anglo trial

The prosecution team in the trial of three Anglo Irish Bank officials "deliberately confused" the court and jury and "sought to profit from that confusion" to make a case against Bernard Daly, his counsel had told the Court of Appeal.

Seán Guerin SC said the prosecution mislead the jury by telling them at the beginning of the trial “they’d hear evidence they never heard”, and at the end, by telling them “they heard it”.

The judge “did not put that right”, Mr Guerin said.

Daly, former company secretary, and Tiarnan O'Mahoney, former chief operations officer at Anglo, were jailed in July for conspiracy to falsify bank records and defraud the Revenue Commissioners. They both denied knowingly furnishing false information and conspiring to defraud the Revenue as well as conspiring to have accounts deleted from the bank's internal system.

Judge Patrick McCartan, at the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, sentenced Daly (67), of Collins Avenue West, Whitehall, Dublin, to two years in prison. O’Mahoney (56), of Glen Pines, Enniskerry, Co Wicklow, was jailed for three years.

Both men are appealing their convictions and the length of their sentences.

Mr Guerin said the evidence that his client furnished a list of non-resident bank accounts to Revenue that excluded the account of John Peter O’Toole was “weak”. He said his client was a “conduit for the bank” in November 2003, when the list was provided, but that did not suggest any knowledge on his part of any falsehood contained in the list.

And there was “no evidence at all” for the conspiracy charges brought against Daly, in relation to a plan to delete accounts from the bank system and defraud revenue, Mr Guerin said.

He told the court that, at the beginning of the trial, the prosecution extended the dates alleged for the conspiracy offences “without any evidential basis”.

“The fact that they did that, and were allowed to do that, is the root of all evil as far as we are concerned,” he said. “Mr Daly should never have been on trial for the conspiracy offences.”

He said Judge McCartan allowed the charges on the basis of evidence given by bank official Brian Gillespie about a conversation they had, but it related to the November 2003 list.

Mr Guerin said that was “a totally false basis to allow the charges” and was “thoroughly illogical” and “plainly incorrect”. He said the judge was “manifestly wrong” in allowing them.

He also highlighted issues with the Garda investigation which formed the basis of the trial.

Gardaí relied on evidence produced by an internal investigation carried out by Anglo fraud investigator Patrick Peake. The identity of the person who originally created a list of accounts provided to Revenue in 2003, was never investigated though it was “central to the case”, Mr Guerin said.

He also said, in his closing charge, the judge confused what happened in June 2003 and November 2003.

“Those errors in the charge alone are fatal to any notion of a fair trial for Mr Daly,” Mr Guerin said.

The appeal continues before Mr Justice George Birmingham, sitting with Mr Justice Garrett Sheehan and Mr Justice John Edwards.

Last December, the Court of Appeal quashed an 18-month sentence imposed on the two men’s co-accused, a former Anglo assistant manager, Aoife Maguire, for her role in the conspiracy. The court found the sentence was too severe and substituted a new nine-month sentence in its place, suspending any unserved portion, releasing her from prison.