Highly confidential information appeared to have been leaked to the media shortly after gardai had become aware of it, counsel for Dublin solicitors,
Michael E. Hanahoe and Co, said in the High Court yesterday.
Mr Donal O'Donnell SC, for the solicitors, said if Mr Justice Kinlen considered there had been a deliberate leak it seemed to follow that someone had not been frank and had misled the court. Given the nature of the leak, it had to be deliberate.
Mr O'Donnell was making closing submissions on behalf of the solicitors'
firm, which is asking the court for an order quashing decisions by District
Judge Gillian Hussey at Kilmainham Court on October 3rd last.
Judge Hussey granted search warrants to the gardai, who on the same day took files from the firm's offices relating to property transactions on behalf of
John and Geraldine Gilligan.
The Gilligans and their associates are the subjects of Garda investigations into money-laundering and drug trafficking.
During the hearing it was alleged that anonymous telephone calls were received by the media and that a number of journalists were already outside the solicitors' premises before the gardai arrived. Mr O'Donnell said a large amount of the evidence which had emerged during the six-day hearing had been concerned with leaking information and was quite extraordinary. The media appeared to have been contacted with highly confidential information which the gardai had only become aware of very recently. As a matter of probability the leak was not the result of eavesdropping, which meant it was either through inadvertence or deliberate on the part of some agent of the State. He submitted that given the nature of the leak it had to be deliberate.
A number of factors enhanced this view, said Mr O'Donnell, including the refusal of the Garda authorities to hold an official inquiry. The court was entitled to take account of the State's approach to the case and the elaborate evidence that there had been no deliberate leak and that it might have been eavesdropping.
Mr O'Donnell said the three central questions for the court were: whether the search warrant was valid; did the circumstances attending its execution render the warrant invalid, and the question of damages.
Earlier, Mr Barry Galvin, CAB's legal officer, criticised a request by a past president of the Law Society that the Garda Commissioner should apologise to the solicitors' firm.
Mr Galvin said Mr Andy Smyth, as president of the Law Society, had asked for an apology for a media leak relating to the search for documents.
If the Commissioner had been approached in a manner other than seeking to blame the gardai for the leak, Mr Galvin could see no reason why an agreed statement would not have been forthcoming.
Mr Galvin said he believed "a process" was taking place in which gardai were trying to find out how the anonymous calls came to be made.
He felt a Law Society statement following the search ought to have been in terms that solicitors had nothing to fear and that there was nothing wrong just because a search warrant was being served on them.
The firm of Michael E. Hanahoe and Co was well known for acting in criminal cases and was known for its integrity.
Chief Supt Fachtna Murphy, the chief officer of the CAB, denied that Garda senior management had been involved in leaking information to the media.
The hearing continues today.