THE JURY in the £400,000 Shannon Development fraud trial has been told that Clare Fianna Fail councillor, Mr Enda Mulkere, was sacked from his executive position in the company after fraud allegations were made against him.
He had been asked to explain why he received cheques made payable to cash from McCarthy Brothers and Company and why Shannon Development paid £16,182 to this contracting company for work it did not do.
SFADCo's assistant chief executive, Mr Jack Burke, and financial controller, Mr John McDonnell, said Cllr Mulkere was suspended on full pay after a meeting on June 16th, 1992, because they were not satisfied with his answers.
Mr Burke told the jury at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court that Cllr Mulkere denied the allegations. He was given time to reflect on them and a second was held on June 25th, 1992. Cllr Mulkere changed aspects of his original explanations at this meeting. He was then invited to reply to specific questions sent to him by letter dated July 2nd, 1992, but when he failed to reply he was formally dismissed on July 7th, 1992.
The manager of SFADCo's construction and maintenance division, Mr Brian Warner, also told the jury about two copies of an invoice for £16,182 from McCarthy Brothers found during a search of Cllr Mulkere's filing cabinet after he was suspended.
One was an original invoice for £16,182 from McCarthys for work allegedly done by the company at Smithstown, Shannon, but no such work was ever done by the contractor for SFADCo.
A payment for £16,182 had been certified for McCarthys in relation to drylining some apartments at Traderee Court but Mr Warner said it emerged that Cllr Mulkere had failed to ask McCarthys to do this work.
Mr Warner also told Mr Paul O'Higgins SC, prosecuting, that no documentation had been produced in December 1991 to indicate that £17,300 had been included in a certificate related to the Eurotechnopole project for alleged "additional works" carried out by Michael Madden and Son Ltd for SFADCo.
The Madden company had in fact carried out five additional small jobs for SFADCo at the same time as it worked on the major Eurotechnopole project at Plassey, but these were properly invoiced by it and paid for. The total amount exceeded £17,300.
Cllr Mulkere (46), of Carrownacloughy, Crusheen, Co Clare, has pleaded not guilty to 16 charges alleging he committed fraud by false pretences on dates from October 1991 to June 1992 while he was an executive at SFADCo.
Mr Burke and Mr McDonnell said Cllr Mulkere was told at the meeting on June 16th, 1992, of allegations that he had received cheques from McCarthys and had asked a consulting engineer to include £16,182 extra on a certificate for McCarthys.
Cllr Mulkere at first denied the allegations. He said he had been "under a lot of pressure" to get work done around Shannon. He could not give details of the alleged extra work done and could not recall the name of the foreman dealing with it or who he had dealt with in McCarthys, the court heard. At the second meeting on June 25th, 1992, the defendant accepted McCarthys had not done extra work for him but again he could not give details of who had done it and what work was done.
He denied he had received cheques from McCarthys but when shown the cheques, Cllr Mulkere told the Shannon executives that McCarthys gave him sealed envelopes with cheques in them for sub contractors he claimed had carried out work for him. Mr McDonnell told Mr O'Higgins (with Mr Paul McDermott) this reply made no sense because Cllr Mulkere could not explain how he was able to give the right cheque to a particular person. Cllr Mulkere's signature was on the back of one cheque and he explained this by saying he went to the bank to help the sub contractor cash it. He could not name this alleged subcontractor.
Mr McDonnell told Mr Peter Charleton SC (with Mr John Major), defending, that Cllr Mulkere was "stunned" when Mr Burke told him of the allegations. He might have given the impression he thought there was a political motivation behind them but his responses did not make sense, Mr McDonnell said.
Replying to Mr Major, Mr Burke said he demanded an explanation from Mr Jack McCarthy of McCarthy Brothers on why he invoiced SFADCo for £16,182 for work his company had not done.
Mr McCarthy replied that Cllr Mulkere had asked him to pay out cheques for sub contractors who he said had done jobs for him and this invoice was to repay that money. The hearing continues.