The British government dropped a top Belfast company from a multi-million pound development without investigating an alleged link to IRA money laundering because the risk of any association would be politically catastrophic, the High Court in Belfast heard yesterday.
Businessman Peter Curistan's lawyers claimed a probe into the accounts of his firm, Sheridan Millennium, was poisoned by baseless accusations that it was using terrorist cash.
As a three-day legal challenge began into a decision by the Department for Social Development to terminate Sheridan's appointment as preferred developer for the huge Queen's Quay riverside project, Mark Horner QC insisted his client was completely unconnected to crime.
When the allegations linking him to IRA dirty money were made in parliament by Democratic Unionist MP Peter Robinson, Mr Curistan was prepared to throw open the company books in order to receive a clean bill of health, the court was told.
Mr Horner stressed: "Neither Sheridan nor Mr Curistan have anything to fear. Rather, they have everything to gain from lifting the cloud of suspicion that then descended upon them.
"No investigation was carried out by the Department for Social Development or Laganside Corporation and consequently Sheridan had everything to fear. If the risk remained that Sheridan was laundering dirty IRA money, then the government in general and the department would become complicit in a criminal enterprise."
Mr Curistan was removed from the development plans last December, months after Mr Robinson used parliamentary privilege to make the allegation.
Mr Curistan was in court to hear Mr Horner open the judicial review by telling Mr Justice Gillen that Belfast's Odyssey complex was one of a number of developments which proved the firm's ability to deliver quality, ambitious projects.