THE JURY at the trial of a financial adviser accused of laundering more than £3 million was yesterday asked to consider the credibility of his explanation that he received the money from three Bulgarian businessmen seeking to buy a sand and gravel pit in Co Offaly.
Prosecution counsel Marjorie Farrell told the jury they should use their experience of life to assess the credibility of Ted Cunningham’s explanation for how he got more than £2.3 million found at his house in Farran, Co Cork, in February 2005. She pointed out to the jury that Mr Cunningham told gardaí when he was interviewed in custody on February 17th, 2005, that he had received the money from the Bulgarians in a single delivery to the church near his home in Farran in October 2004.
He later said that a version he gave on February 18th, 2005, that he received the money in four deliveries and knew it was from the Northern Bank raid had been made after he was threatened by gardaí that they would leak it to the press that he was an informer, she said.
“He now says that it did not all come from the Bulgarians in October 2004 but he says it came in six instalments – £800,000 in October 2004, £200,000 in December 2004 and there were four other instalments in January and February 2005.”
Ms Farrelly told Cork Circuit Criminal Court that Mr Cunningham didn’t accept there was “any inconsistency” in the replacement of the February 17th, 2005, version of events with “a new version” but that was a matter for the jury to “wrestle with”.
And she pointed out Mr Cunningham had agreed that at no stage did the Bulgarians or their delivery men ask for any receipt for the cash nor was Mr Cunningham able to produce “a shred of paperwork in relation to the apparent receipt of these instalments of cash”.
Mr Cunningham had said the Bulgarians didn’t trust the Bulgarian banks but why, given one of them was based in the UK, didn’t they use a British bank, she asked. And why had Mr Cunningham since gone on to sell the pit to an Irish company, despite having £3 million belonging to the Bulgarians? “That’s a question you have to digest and struggle with if you want to accept Mr Cunningham’s version of events,“ she told the jury.
Nor was it credible to believe he had failed to disclosed the proposed sale of the sandpit to his three partners in the project despite having £3 million in his house from the Bulgarians, she suggested. She urged the jury to follow the money backwards from Mr Cunningham’s house and they would find it didn’t originate in Bulgaria or the UK but in the robbery of the Northern Bank cash centre in Belfast on December 20th, 2004. The case continues.