Smooth media performer's version of events dismissed

BACKGROUND:The jury was decisive in its verdict – taking just under 2½ hours to find Fred Forsey guilty

THE CONVICTION of an Irish politician for corruption was always going to guarantee headlines. Few though could have predicted it would come as it has in the case of Fred Forsey jnr, laced as much with tales of marital infidelity as with political intrigue.

A consummate media performer when a member of Dungarvan Town Council, Forsey (43), a father of three, delivered yet again for the media over the past two weeks during a corruption trial which must have had subeditors licking their lips.

Indeed the salacious nature of the story was well caught by one headline,“Sex, lies and corruption”, which prompted a complaint by Forsey’s defence, John Phelan SC, only for Judge Gerard Griffin to respond tersely: “Well, it is about sex, lies, corruption.”

Tracing the genesis of the former driving instructor’s downfall involves a journey back to at least three significant events – his co-option on to Dungarvan Town Council, his falling on hard times business wise and the break-up of his marriage.

Forsey’s first foray into politics came courtesy of then Fine Gael councillor John Deasy who, upon his election as a TD, invited the impressive Forsey to replace him on the town council. Forsey was co-opted on to the council.

Later elected in 2004, he emerged as a capable media performer to the point that when Waterford Crystal closed its 395 job plant in Dungarvan in June 2005, he went on Sky News Ireland to pledge he would do all he could to bring jobs to the town.

However, his own driving school business employment was proving increasingly less lucrative over the years. After moving to a bigger house in order, he claimed, to appease his then wife, Jenny, he began to feel the pinch financially.

“I was broke,” Forsey repeated during his testimony as he sought to set the scene for his decision to approach a developer “worth a couple of hundred million” for a loan to allow him to extend his house and remortgage it after being turned down by the banks.

However his now ex-wife Jenny told a different story, testifying how, after meeting the developer in a bar in Dungarvan one night, Forsey announced to her on their walk home that he thought he would “get in with” the developer.

Getting in with the developer involved trying to get Dungarvan Town Council to extend the town boundary to include a 32-hectare site owned by the developer and pushing Waterford County Council officials and councillors to have the land rezoned.

Forsey protested throughout the trial that he had no influence with Waterford County Council in getting the land rezoned from agricultural to industrial/ residential as he was a member of Dungarvan Town Council.

He did not even know that the developer was involved in the project until he checked the planning files at Waterford County Council on October 26th, 2006, after learning that the project had been refused planning a day earlier, he told the court.

Forsey insisted his interest in the project was solely to bring jobs to Dungarvan and was unrelated to his receipt in August 2006 of €60,000 and his further receipt in October and December of that year of two sums of €10,000 to help him meet his debts.

Yet, after the developer lodged €60,000 in his account on August 25th, 2006, Forsey, rather than go “on half rations” as it was suggested most people would do, took his wife and children away for a €3,000 weekend break in Rome while spending another €13,000 on a car and withdrawing €8,000 in cash.

The holiday, Forsey suggested, was because his wife wanted a break but it failed to save their strained marriage which sundered in October 2006 when Jenny discovered he was having an affair with then 20-year-old Karen Morrissey. It was perhaps this more than anything that triggered Forsey’s downfall.

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” declared Phelan, and, as the marriage dissolved in bitterness, Forsey quickly learned the truth of the Congreve line.

Even the motives for Jenny contacting the authorities were disputed in court, with Forsey saying his ex-wife threatened to go to the Garda with the details of the payments from the property developer after their marriage broke up. Jenny, in contrast, said she went to tell Deasy only after her husband failed to repay to her a €10,000 loan she gave him to get a new driving school car in order to continue working so he could pay her maintenance for herself and the children.

Whatever the motivation, the result was the same – Deasy organised a meeting with Supt Tom O’Grady and a Garda inquiry was begun, culminating on July 31st, 2009, with Forsey’s arrest.

Forsey’s interview with gardaí was revealing as was his view on the matter of the €80,000 payments when asked by Denis Vaughan Buckley SC, prosecuting, about his comment that “there was no free meal” from the developer.

He wouldn’t have used such a phrase but if he did, he was referring to the fact he would have to pay interest on what he insisted was a loan, albeit an unsecured one, Forsey told the court.

Smooth and suave, Forsey remained calm in the witness box, showing just a hint of annoyance once as he insisted that a loan document dated August 20th, 2006, was not drawn up retrospectively on January 9th, 2007, to cover the deal.

The jury was decisive in its verdict – taking just under 2½ hours to find him unanimously guilty of all six corruption charges – a damning dismissal of the version of events he had asked it to believe.