Jail escaper denies CAB claim he had hackney cab

A Belfast prison escaper whom the Criminal Assets Bureau has alleged worked as a hackney driver without paying tax told the High Court yesterday he was under such intense Garda surveillance that gardaí would have known if he was working as claimed.

Anthony Sloan said Garda Special Branch detectives were parked outside his house in Dundalk six or seven times a day from 1992, and that he was stopped "umpteen times" weekly. He was under intense overt and covert surveillance which intensified to such a degree after the IRA ceasefire of 1994 that he made complaints to the Garda and Sinn Féin.

It had never been alleged he was working as a hackney driver until CAB took proceedings against him, he said. He denied he had been working as alleged. Asked about a Garda's claim that he had been stopped in January 1995 with a fare, Sloan said he had no taxi plate at that time and had been stopped for speeding but no action was taken alleging he had a fare.

Mr Michael Forde SC, forSloan, said he had challenged CAB to indicate what evidence it had to support claims that Sloan's income constituted the proceeds of crime but that CAB had failed to answer that challenge.

This was a fundamental issue of civil liberties involving CAB using all its machinery against persons uninvolved in crime, he said.

Mr Richard Nesbitt SC, for CAB - which has demanded some €170,886 from Sloan in alleged unpaid taxes on €64,914, with interest penalties of €105,606, for the years 1993 to 1996 - accepted the bureau was not arguing in this case that Sloan's alleged income was the proceeds of crime.

In his evidence, Sloan said he had been convicted in 1981 in the North on firearms and unlawful imprisonment charges during the "supergrass" trials, but had escaped before sentencing. He came to the Republic where he was arrested and served a prison sentence relating to the escape. He was released in 1989 and in 1992 rented a house in Dundalk.

He decided to go into the taxi business in 1994. He hung around a hackney firm in Dundalk which functioned like a drop-in centre for Northerners. He had worked as a taxi-driver in the North.

He had agreed to sign an insurance form for the owner of a hackney firm related to an Opel Vectra car. He said he signed the form as a favour to the owner who already had two cars insured and had received a prohibitive quotation for the Opel. The form was blank and he did not know who had filled it in. He was not the owner of the Opel.

In 1995, he asked the hackney firm owner for a job and applied for a hackney plate. While awaiting the plate, his Public Service Vehicle (PSV) licence was revoked as a result of Garda objections related to his convictions in the North, which he had declared in his application for his previous PSV licence. He pursued the licence matter and it was later reinstated by court order.

He said he had a hackney licence from August 1994 but no plate until 1996 and could not drive a hackney without a plate.

Cross-examined by Mr Nesbitt, he agreed he had provided a false employment record when applying for loans to financial institutions. He had always paid the loans back and never defaulted.

Mr Nesbitt suggested that all the evidence pointed to Sloan working as a hackney driver in the years alleged. Sloan asked why, if that was the case, the gardaí had never reported him.

The hearing continues today.