TWO former executives of the Goodman-owned Anglo-Irish Beef Processors plant at Rathkeale, Co Limerick, have been given six-year suspended sentences for their roles in a Pounds 900,000 intervention beef fraud.
The six-year sentences were originally imposed in October 1995 on accountant Sean Goodwin and boning hall manager Anthony Butler after they pleaded guilty in April 1995 to their involvement in the crime.
Mr Justice Moriarty, who is now in the High Court, put a stay on the sentences until they each completed 240 hours community service. He also disqualified them from serving as company directors in the State for six years.
Judge Cyril Kelly, at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court yesterday, was told the community service orders had been completed satisfactorily by both men. He formally imposed the six-year sentences but suspended them, and bound both men to the peace for four years.
Goodwin (48), of Portland Estate, Newcastlewest, and Butler (35), of Tough, Adare, admitted they conspired together and with a person or persons unknown to defraud the Minister for Agriculture by wrongfully misappropriating beef from the intervention line at the AIBP plant in Rathkeale, thus exposing the Minister to loss or damage.
They pleaded guilty in April 1995 to committing the offences on dates unknown between December 1st, 1989, and October 6th, 1991.
A total of Pounds 905,000 was defrauded in 121 intervention beef contract claims from the Rathkeale plant to the Minister for Agriculture in the period July 1990 to August 1991, Supt Michael McCarthy told the court at a previous hearing.
Supt McCarthy said the plant submitted a total of 528 intervention claims from 1988 to 1991. Neither of the men benefited from the fraud; only the company profited. The plant's intervention licence had been suspended, he said.
A third man accused, Mr Lawrence Kelly, Ballywilliam, Rathkeale, Co Limerick, was found not guilty of the same charges by Judge Gerard Buchanan following a five-day trial two years ago.
The judge withdrew the case from the jury because of evidence, elicited by what he called "very able cross-examination" by defence counsel Mr Brendan Grogan SC, that Mr Kelly's name had been forged on documents. His paperwork was accurate but was rewritten.
Mr Kelly had been ordered to do certain things or he would have been dismissed.
Judge Buchanan said the evidence established that there had been "widespread fraud and malpractice" at the Rathkeale plant. He said taxpayers were aware from the Beef Tribunal report that they had "to pay large sums of money to repair the damage done by these malpractices".
There was no evidence Mr Kelly had been involved in preparing and sending the fraudulent paper-work to the Department of Agriculture which, resulted in the large sums of money being paid out.
On the second day of the Kelly trial, Judge Buchanan rejected an intervention by counsel for the Goodman group, who had sought what was called "clarification" of a claim made by prosecuting counsel, Mr Edward Comyn SC, that there had been "conspiracy at a high level by key people in the Goodman group organisation".
Mr Donal O'Donnell BL, for the Goodman group, wondered if there had been "an inadvertent misreporting" by the media of the prosecution's opening remarks.
Mr Comyn said he had thought "long and hard" about his statement. It was a matter for the court to decide if what he said was supported by the evidence.
Outlining the case to the jury on the opening day of Mr Kelly's trial, Mr Comyn claimed document, found at the AIBP head office in Ravensdale, Co Louth, supported the State's contention that there was "a planned conspiracy at a high level" and "an organised cover-up".
When Mr O'Donnell suggested that prosecuting counsel's comments "flew in the face of the Beef, Tribunal report", Judge Buchanan replied: "Your clients are not entitled to interrupt or interfere with a criminal trial which is in progress".