TWO JEWELLERS yesterday told how a financial adviser charged with money laundering over £3 million taken in the Northern Bank raid gave them £50,000 to mind a week before the bank robbery took place on December 20th, 2004.
Father and son Jack (74) and John Douglas (35) from Tullamore in Co Offaly both testified that Ted Cunningham came to them about December 14th/15th, 2004, and asked them to mind a bag full of sterling notes which amounted to £50,000.
Both men told Cork Circuit Criminal Court that Mr Cunningham, whom they had known for some years, called to their shop in Tullamore and asked them to mind the money which he said he had got from the sale of property in Dundalk, Co Louth.
The money was one of three cash consignments that Mr Cunningham asked them to mind; he returned in January and February 2005 with two separate consignments of £100,000.
John Douglas said the first of these £100,000 deliveries was about a week before he went with Mr Cunningham, then chairman of Bank of Scotland (Ireland) Phil Flynn, ex-ICC chief executive Denis O’Connell, and Isle of Man solicitor John Sturgeon to Bulgaria on January 22nd, 2005, while the second was in February.
“I received £250,000 altogether,” said John Douglas, adding that he didn’t count the money but put all five bags under the bed in an upstairs room of the house where his parents lived over their jeweller’s shop on Bridge St in Tullamore.
“Mammy kind of said to Ted ‘I hope there’s nothing wrong with it’ and he said ‘No, not at all’,” said John Douglas, adding that he and his parents had had business dealings with Mr Cunningham some years earlier.
Jack Douglas told the court that he hadn’t put the cash into his safe because it was full with jewellery and he believed that putting it under the bed and later into a wardrobe was just as secure as his home was “a safe house” with iron bars on all the windows.
He told how he met Mr Cunningham, whom he described as “a very honourable man”, when he brought two bags of cash and he asked him if the cash was from the Northern Bank and Mr Cunningham replied “Not at all, Jack – would I do a thing like that to you?” He said that when he heard media reports in February 2005 that a 56-year-old man had been arrested in Co Cork for questioning about Northern Bank money, he and his son John wondered if it might be Mr Cunningham. “John looked at me and I looked at him and said ‘Could that be Ted?’,” said Mr Douglas snr adding that when they got a fuller account on a later television news bulletin they became concerned and John suggested contacting the Garda about the cash.
“I said what if the IRA, the Sinn Féin fellows come looking for their money,” said Mr Douglas snr and they decided to hang on to the money until gardaí called to them soon after and they handed over the cash to detectives.
Det Sgt Vincent Byrne of the Criminal Assets Bureau said no member of the investigative team found any evidence of a house or property sale in Dundalk by Mr Cunningham or his company, Chesterton Finance.
Mr Cunningham denies 20 charges of money-laundering, including having £3,010,380 at Farran between December 2004 and February 2005, knowing or believing it to be the proceeds of robbery at the Northern Bank cash centre in Belfast.
