The Englishman told the gardai that Kennedy had asked him to ‘launder’ money from the sale of US Treasury Bonds by opening a bank account on behalf of a certain Kurov. The accused denied uttering the documents knowing them to be forged and with intent to defraud the bank.
Mr Desmond Rafferty of the Irish Farmers Bank said that he met the men on April 20, when Kennedy handed him the US Treasury Bounds as security for a loan. Rafferty told the court that in the twenty-five years at the bank he had never seen such bonds offered in security against such large sums of money for loans. Kennedy said he was merely acting as a broker for a 5% commission.
Mulligan, the only witness who could have given evidence in Kennedy’s favour, took off from Havana at eleven in the evening on a flight via Amsterdam to Dublin, shortly after take off he appeared to have suffered a stroke. The flight had a scheduled stop at Santiago de Cuba, where he was taken off and transported to hospital in a Cuban army ambulance. The doctors announced a massive overdose of cocaine, which resulted in a total paralysis. He spent more than three weeks in the intensive care unit before he was in condition to be brought back to Dublin. He then spent another eight weeks completely paralysed before finally moving the fingers of his left hand.
The gardai had wanted to question Mulligan, who was suspected of aiding and abetting Kennedy. In addition he was suspected of being engaged in drug trafficking – according to the PNR report his baggage contained one kilo of pure cocaine.
Kennedy was found guilty and sentenced to five years imprisonment at the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court for attempting to defraud the Irish Farmers Bank of I£10,000,000. Judge O’Hara agreed with the prosecution counsel that Kennedy had sufficient knowledge that the bonds were forged and from a doubtful source. Kennedy was an experienced and well-qualified financial and fiscal expert and as a consequence was fully aware of his actions.
Senior officials of the Bank of Ireland had alerted the Garda Fraud Squad to the attempted fraud, when the men had asked for a very large loan purportedly to finance an international commodity trading operation by a recently set up Limerick based company, International Sugar Ltd., in which Kennedy was a director. Kennedy had presented supporting documents from a Cuban trading company to this effect. However, Garda Detective Coogan, told the court that the Cuban Embassy had no knowledge of the said company.
According to an expert witness from the US Embassy, the bonds were part of a batch of forgeries believed to have been printed in Russia.
Kennedy was due to appear in court again in July on another charge relating to counterfeit US currency, which was found at his home during the investigation into the stolen bonds by the Gardai.
Kennedy’s wife issued a statement to the effect that he was innocent and that John Castlemain the CEO of the Anglo-Irish Union bank, now missing in the Caribbean, had instructed him to assist the persons presently indicted with him. She at her husband’s request quoted words spoken from St. Peter in the New Testament:
“Who can harm you if you devote yourselves to doing good? If you suffer the sake of Righteousness, happy are you. Do you not fear what they fear or be disturbed as they are, but bless the Lord Christ in your heart. Always have an answer ready when you are called upon to account for your hope, but give it simple and with respect. Keep your conscience clear so that those who liable and slander you may be put to shame by your upright, Christian living. Better to suffer for doing good, if it is God’s will, than for doing wrong.”
Tony Arrowsmith screamed with laughter as he threw the Irish Times on the deck, “The most fuckin comical thing I have ever heard. Serves the cheating bastard right!” and asked their chef and barman another round of drinks for Kavanagh and their two journalists friends on the Marie Galante II as they sailed from Gosier for a cruise to celebrate the acquisition of his new yacht.
As to Mulligan when he finally spoke it was a strange English mixed with languages he barely knew, Spanish and Gaelic. He was medically incapable of giving the least evidence to help Kennedy or his judges who were intent on making a political verdict to deter those who dared bring the Republic into disrepute.
The Spanish police were said to be interested in Mulligan’s wife, who was last seen in Marbella with an up and coming Irish pop guitarist living the life of a jet-set star. She had found the pilots bag that Kennedy had confided to Mulligan for safe keeping for the late and regretted Kurov.
Chapter 88
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