THE JURY in the Shannon Development fraud trial has been told by a prosecution counsel the case arose from the greed of a Clare Fianna Fail councillor Mr Enda Mulkere, while he was an executive with the company.
Mr Paul McDermott said Mr Mulkere's guilt was clearly established "out of his own mouth". He advised the jury to look at the broad picture and not allow itself be diverted by "red herrings".
Mr McDermott said that far from having major financial problems as he claimed, Mr Mulkere had a well paid job, his wife had a good job and salary, and he had a farm. But his greed led him to defraud £84,000 from two contractors and then attempt to have SFADCo repay them.
The accused lodged most of the £84,000 into various accounts and put £14,000 of it in cash into his own back pocket, said counsel.
Mr Peter Charleton SC, defending, suggested the jury should check carefully if the State case stood up to analysis rather than just look at the "broad picture" advised by the prosecution.
He advised the jury to use a calculator when determining its verdict and look minutely at all the figures in the charges, in documents, and otherwise also given in evidence. They did not match up when scrutinised and if they did not correlate then the prosecution case had to fail, said Mr Charleton.
Counsels comments were made in their final speeches to the jury on the 10th day of the trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
Judge Kevin Haugh will address the jury on Monday before it retires to consider its verdicts in the 16 charges against Mr Mulkere.
Mr Mulkere is denying he obtained money by false pretences and causing or attempting to cause Shannon Development to pay sums to contractors by false pretences on dates from October 1991 to June 1992.
Mrs Anne Mulkere, the defendant's wife, said she was a secondary school teacher and they married in 1975. They had a mortgage of some £75,000 in 1991 1992 and her husband owed large sums to other banks.
Mr Charleton asked her to explain why her car was traded in for a new one and £7,412 cash in December 1991 when they had financial difficulties.
She said a car was essential for her to go to work as well to leave her own children to school. Her Renault 4L was giving her a lot of trouble and had left her stranded on the road several times.
Counsel asked if she could shed light on the £14,000 which the accused had drawn as cash from cheques he was given by contractors Jack McCarthy and Thomas Madden.
Mrs Mulkere said 1991 was a local election year and her husband also saw himself then as a potential Dail Eireann candidate. He attended a lot of political meetings and events at that time and bought a lot of drink.
Mr McDermott said Mr Mulkere attempted to have the jury believe there was a series of conspiracies against him. There was no logic in his case.
It was an "amazing" coincidence that two contractors independently should tell SFADCo the same story: that they gave cheques to Mr Mulkere to pay subcontractors and that Mr Mulkere told them they would be repaid through contract certificates. They would not say that unless it was true.