A 60-YEAR-OLD financial adviser jailed for 10 years for laundering more than £3 million stolen in the Northern Bank raid has agreed to pay more than €340,000 to the State after it applied for a confiscation order for any benefits that he obtained from his crimes.
Ted Cunningham of Woodbine Lodge, Farran, Co Cork, was convicted last March by a jury on majority verdicts of all 10 counts of money laundering arising from the Belfast raid following a 45-day trial at Cork Circuit Criminal Court.
Last month, the DPP served a statement under the 1994 Criminal Justice Act on Cunningham alleging he had gained benefit or pecuniary advantage from the criminal activities of which he was convicted and he was given a month to refute the allegations or accept the statement.
Yesterday, Cunningham was back in the Cork court where counsel for the DPP, Marjorie Farrelly SC, said Cunningham had consented to a confiscation order for €343,520 which he was to pay to the State.
Counsel for Cunningham, Jim O’Mahony SC, confirmed that his client was consenting to the confiscation order and said it was accepted by the State that the order would not be admissible in any criminal proceedings against his client.
Judge Con Murphy affirmed the confiscation order and gave Cunningham six months in which to pay the amount to the State.
Cunningham, who had been granted free legal aid by Judge Murphy, is appealing both his conviction and his sentence to the Court of Criminal Appeal but it may be next year before the appeal is heard. The State had previously applied for its cost in the case when Cunningham was being sentenced but this had been refused by Judge Murphy, who said that application for free legal aid had been properly made on Cunningham’s behalf and had been properly granted.
At sentencing, the judge said Cunningham had committed a serious offence involving a large sum of money and a variety of methods of disposal or laundering including many which involved innocent people. “There is no doubt but that there was premeditation and planning involved in the offences and during the trial itself, he persisted right to the end with a concocted alibi that the Bulgarians were buying a pit in Shinrone .
“It was a reasonably well constructed alibi and its genesis may have been before the Northern Bank raid took place,” said Judge Murphy, adding that Cunningham had also persisted with a claim that he was coerced by gardaí into making certain admissions.
“He persisted right to the end of his trial that these various admissions were as a result of illness, lack of sleep, threats or inducements – it was found by the jury, as it was by me during the voir dire, that these admissions were made freely and voluntarily,” he said.
There were some mitigating factors in Cunningham’s favour including his age, poor health in that he suffers from a blood disorder and the fact that he had no previous convictions and had previously been of blameless good character.
Judge Murphy said that taking all the circumstances into account, he was sentencing Cunningham to 10 years on each of the 10 counts with the sentences to run concurrently and he backdated the sentence to March 27th last when he was first taken into custody.