An international financier and film-maker has told Cork Criminal Circuit Cork how he became the victim of a con-man after he agreed to arrange funding for a £16 million hotel deal.
Mr Walter Robin, of Rue Grimaldi, Monte Carlo, said that an intermediary, Mr Sven Uwe Palisch, who was to organise a deposit on the deal, absconded with the money.
Before the court are Ms Maria Bernadetta Jehle, who is Swiss, and Mr Ernst Gunther Hollman, a German, both of The Priory, Ballymore, Cobh, Co Cork, who are each charged with two counts of handling money knowing it was the proceeds of other persons' criminal activities. They deny the offences. The case is the first under money-laundering legislation.
Yesterday, the fifth day of the trial before Judge Patrick Moran and a jury, Mr Robin described how in July 1996 he was approached to arrange finance for a German hotelier and businessman, Mr Klaus Jurgen Wiese, who needed DM 40 million (about £16 million) for a hotel and leisure project in Germany.
He examined the plans, presented to him by another Monte Carlo resident, Prof Dr Uwe Benne-Kemper, and decided they were viable.
He met Mr Wiese, his financial adviser, Mr Hubertus Kruse, and Mr Palisch. They were to provide a DM4 million deposit and he would then organise funding.
"Mr Wiese didn't quite have that much and he met with Palisch and Peter Jehle [son of Ms Jehle]. There were other machinations going on in the background and Benne-Kemper, who introduced this cast of characters to me, was keeping au fait with the situation."
The deposit money never arrived in his Monte Carlo bank and eventually he began to wonder what was going on.
"They were using my offices, my professional services and my good name."
Mr Robin said that a document shown him by Mr Wiese and Mr Kruse, purporting to be a receipt signed by him for cash, was bogus.
In cross-examination by Mr Tom Creed, for Ms Jehle, Mr Robin said his company, MCC Investments, was incorporated in the Bahamas. He denied that MCC Investments was struck off the Bahamas Register of Companies.
Earlier in the week Mr Wiese and a French dentist, Mr Patric Gueniot, told the court how they were the victims of "scams" by Mr Palisch and Mr Jehle. Money totalling about £2 million that they handed over to these two, as deposits to secure loans, had allegedly vanished.
The case continues on Monday.