The Cork-born financier Mr Finbarr Ross may seek compensation through the courts following the setting aside of his conviction by the Court of Appeal in Belfast yesterday.

Speaking outside the court after it was found that the judge who heard his case had misdirected the jury, Mr Ross (54) said he felt vindicated.

Asked where more than £7 million sterling (€11.3 million) lost at the time of the collapse of International Investment Ltd (IIL) in 1984 had gone, Mr Ross said the question should be addressed to others.

"I am sorry for all the people who lost money, but no one lost more money in this than I did," he said.

Mr Ross was sentenced to 21/2 years in prison last year after he was found guilty of three charges relating to the collapse of his Gibraltar-registered company.

The firm was operated from Dublin and most investors who lost money in the collapse were from Northern Ireland.

Mr Ross was convicted of three out of 41 charges which were brought against him, after the jury in an earlier trial had failed to reach a verdict.

Last night Mr Ross was understood to be staying with family in the Republic. He has been out of prison on bail since October 2000 when he lodged his appeal. Overall he has spent about two years in prison in Northern Ireland and the US since his arrest in Oklahoma, in the US, in March 1998.

He was arrested on foot of warrants issued by the then RUC and was held in prison in the US while he made several unsuccessful attempts to prevent his being brought back to Belfast.

He was eventually brought back to Northern Ireland in May 1999.

Mr Ross's solicitor, Mr John Joe Rice, welcomed yesterday's decision. "We always argued that while there might be some civil liability, Finbarr Ross was never guilty in a criminal sense.

"The Director of Public Prosecutions in the Republic decided that Finbarr Ross should not be brought to trial in the criminal courts and we always maintained that Finbarr Ross was innocent in Northern Ireland."

He said he had now been instructed to consider whether proceedings should be taken against the authorities in Northern Ireland "and indeed in the US", regarding the case.

"There was no-one more sorry than Finbarr Ross that people lost money but his case was that in a criminal culpability sense he was not responsible and his stance has been vindicated."

The Ulster Unionist MP Mr Roy Beggs, who knows some of the investors who lost money, said they would be "deeply perturbed" by yesterday's development and that it was an "absolutely disgraceful outcome".

"I still maintain that there was a total failure on the part of the authorities in the Irish Republic in handling the case from the outset."

He said some important and disturbing evidence had emerged during the course of the two trials of Mr Ross, and that yesterday's ruling did not undermine much of that evidence. These matters needed to be followed up, he said. "This case is far from over."