‘Risk-taker’ Lynn tells court greed seduced ‘all of us’
Michael Lynn’s €27m theft trial enters the f inal stages
SITTING in the witness box, Michael Lynn summoned his wife as the jury took their seats.
‘Bríd… BRÍD,’ he whispered, loudly enough for the whole room to hear, his hand raised in a drinking gesture.
Mr Lynn accepted the bottle of Ballygowan water his wife brought him and took a sip. On the desk before him, a court-supplied jug of water, beside a stack of glasses, remained untouched.
Across the room, the jury turned their heads to watch as Mr Lynn’s wife resumed her seat at the rear of the court.
Bríd Murphy’s name has featured throughout her husband’s trial.
But Tuesday was the first time, since proceedings began 49 days previously, that she attended court as her husband gave evidence in his own defence.
This week, Mr Lynn spent over two days giving evidence and another day being cross-examined, as his multi-million euro theft trial entered its final stages.
Dressed in jeans and a black pullover, with a thick gold chain around her neck, Ms Murphy surveyed the jury closely as her husband spoke.
Led by defence barrister Paul Comiskey O’Keeffe, Mr Lynn described his early career as a solicitor and his ambitions as a property developer.
‘The emphasis was on getting money out the door,’ Mr Lynn said of his banks. He added that he had hired former bankers ‘who speak bankalese’ to smooth the progress of loan applications.
These staff were always ‘incentivised in terms of profit’, Mr Lynn explained.
‘It’s what makes people get up in the morning, if you’re sharing the spoils,’ he said.
In these early stages of his testimony, Mr Lynn appeared ill at ease as he shifted in his seat, grimaced and zipped up and down his green cardigan.
Mr Lynn, 55, with an address in Arklow, Co. Wicklow, is charged with 21 counts of theft amounting to more than €27m from seven lending institutions between October 2006 and April 2007.
He has pleaded not guilty to all counts and has told the jury that he had ‘off the book’ arrangements with bankers who knew his borrowings were not intended for the stated purpose of the loan applications.
Mr Lynn has told the court some of these lenders received gifts, benefits and cash payments in return – something each banker called to testify has denied.
‘I admit I’m many things and let myself down in many ways,’ Mr Lynn said. ‘But I’m not a thief. I had no intention to deceive or steal money from any banks.’
As he described his arrangements with bankers, Mr Lynn stopped his earlier fidgeting and spoke determinedly to the jury.
‘There isn’t one banker who has come in to explain what happened. I’m not surprised by that. I’m disappointed they couldn’t have told the truth,’ he told them.
Mr Lynn recalled how the Law Society shut down his legal practice and froze his bank accounts by High Court order in October 2007, when concerns about his double mortgages first emerged. He told the court: ‘It cut off the lifeblood and starved the company abroad.’
He then described his attempts, having left Ireland in December 2007, to keep his foreign development companies afloat with a ‘black mark’ against his name.
‘It is essentially a commercial tsunami which occurs and you are drowned but you do your best.’ He said the world economic crisis, prompted by the 2008 Lehman Brothers collapse, made it impossible for his businesses to recover.
In his evidence on Wednesday, Mr Lynn denied he had ‘evaded’ planned meetings with gardaí. He said he followed his lawyer’s advice, which was that his ‘right to silence was important’.
‘When you’re in the dentist’s chair, you rarely do your own fillings,’ Mr Lynn explained. ‘So I would have depended on legal advice concerning a criminal process.’
The court has heard that Mr Lynn moved to Brazil in 2011.
‘From my perspective, I needed to try to get on with my life economically,’ he testified. ‘I had been in Europe for three-and-a-half years at that stage.
Mr Lynn told the jury that he and his wife had had fertility treatment in Brazil in 2010 and that his eldest son had been born there in August 2011.
He explained that, with the help of his former Portuguese associates, he had begun seeking development land in Sao Paolo before moving to Recife. Mr Lynn told the court a new port development near Recife had created ‘major, major investment and consequently there were a lot of opportunities likely to occur’.
Mr Lynn then told the jury he had been arrested and imprisoned for four-and-a-half years in August 2013, ‘because my extradition was sought from Ireland’.
He described for the jury his first weekend in a prison processing area. ‘I’m dealing with guys who are, I suppose, strung out. Also, you’re encountering people who are armed and I’m the gringo. So I suppose I would say that what happened me in October 2007 when I lost my practice seems like the worst thing in the world. And it was. But that weekend, I suppose you really achieve a level of serenity in terms of life.’
Mr Lynn told the court that ‘regard for human beings was dreadful’ in Brazilian prison.
‘They have the front of the house painted but it’s extremely depraved in how it’s run and my heart goes out to them,’ he said.
‘I understand. People are in those prisons for particular reasons, including myself, but the treatment of human beings is dreadful and the conditions are deplorable.’ Glancing at his wife, who was listening intently from the back of the court, Mr Lynn told how she had supported him in prison.
‘Bríd visited me every weekend, in fairness,’ he said.
During cross-examination on Thursday, prosecution barrister Karl Finnegan accused Mr Lynn of being ‘led by greed’.
‘Greed got the better of you, didn’t it?’ Mr Finnegan asked. ‘I would say all of us, including the bankers, were carried on a wave of property
‘It’s what makes people get up in the morning’
‘It’s clear he lived for the next big deal’
speculation and at that time I wasn’t alone,’ he replied.
‘It wasn’t a one-way street,’ Mr Lynn added. ‘We were both dating.’
On Friday, in his closing speech, Mr Finnegan told the jury they could find deception and dishonesty on the part of Mr Lynn in any one of four ways: if banks had not been aware of double mortgages; if false documents had been used to create a false impression; if false solicitors’ undertakings had been given; and if money had been used for a purpose other than that agreed in loans.
Concluding his speech, Mr Finnegan said that Mr Lynn was a ‘risk taker’.
‘It’s clear that he lived for the next big deal or the next trick. I’d say it was his drug and he is still gambling and the gamble has changed. The gamble is that you might accept his version of events,’ Mr Finnegan concluded.
Beginning the defence’s closing speech, Mr Comiskey O’Keeffe reminded the jury that the burden of proof rests with the prosecution, saying: ‘If you accept the banks were aware, then there’s no theft. Theft requires deception.’
Mr Comiskey O’Keeffe is expected to conclude his closing speech on Monday.