Smurfit ordered to court over K Club threats claim

Sensational case told call girls used apartments at the golf resort

MICHAEL Smurfit will have to attend court over allegations he ordered a greenkeeper to threaten a former K Club manager.

The ex-manager Peter Curran had previously claimed that apartments were rented to call girls and paid for by the upmarket resort, and that because of that he was threatened at Punchestown races.

Greenkeeper and resort superintendent Gerry Byrne is alleged to have said: ‘Dr Smurfit has not forgotten the statements about him and the call girls. Dr Smurfit knows where to find you and this is not over.’

Yesterday, on the fifth day of Mr Curran’s personal injuries action against Mr Byrne, Dr Smurfit and the K Club, his counsel Kenneth

Fogarty SC applied to subpoena Dr Smurfit to leave his home in Monaco and appear in court.

He said Dr Smurfit, the owner of the K Club, had been on the defendants’ witness list, but would not now be called.

He wished to question him about any alleged instructions he gave to Mr Byrne to make the threat. Counsel for Dr Smurfit, Rossa Fanning SC, objected strongly, saying that no legal authority had been offered for the move.

But Judge Anthony Barr replied: ‘I am satisfied that once the party is invoking the jurisdiction of the court by appearing as a defendant, he has made himself amenable to the court, notwithstanding his residence abroad.

‘It would be different if he were a stranger to the proceedings, it

might be different then issuing a subpoena to an Irish citizen who is not resident here. But he is on the list,’ he said.

Judge Barr said the court had sufficient inherent jurisdiction to issue a subpoena ordering Dr Smurfit to give evidence. He added: ‘And I will do so.’ He also allowed Mr Curran’s side to serve the subpoena through Dr Smurfit’s Dublin-based solicitors. A copy will be sent to his address at Avenue de Citronniers, Monaco.

During cross examination by Gerry Danaher SC, for the K Club, Mr Curran said when he began working as the resort’s food and beverages manager in 1997, he had admired Dr Smurfit.

‘But then I saw another side to him,’ he said.

Mr Curran, 50, of Cahersiveen, Co. Kerry, explained: ‘Over time, my job was to shadow Dr Smurfit

when he came to the hotel, because he was number one. And we had a lot of conversations.

‘He was a mathematical genius, and a communications expert. I can’t complain about his vision or about how detailed he was... But I understood the man very well, and his character and the type of man he was.’ He said he had raised

‘irregularities’ with Dr Smurfit over the way the K Club was run but the tycoon’s response was to squeeze his arm and ask for ‘severe loyalty’.

Mr Curran claims he was unfairly dismissed from the K Club in 1998. He alleged: ‘I was escorted off the premises by two gentlemen who

followed me. One ex-SAS, the other ex-British Special Branch, men who worked for Dr Smurfit.’

He claimed both men had been armed, and he added: ‘They are there to put the fear of God into anyone who is a threat to the establishment.’

After his dismissal, and a subsequent High Court case relating to it, he feared for his life, he said.

Mr Curran claims he was beginning to recover from this when the threat was made by Mr Byrne in 2011. He said Dr Smurfit knew his staff on a one-to-one basis, and that Mr Byrne was also in the ‘inner circle’.

He also said he had seen ‘grown men in tears’ following dealings with Dr Smurfit

All the claims are denied by the three defendants.

The case continues.

‘There to put the fear of God into you’