Man fails in bid to learn fate of €3.4m seized at his home

A FORMER businessman who laundered some of the proceeds of the 2004 Northern Bank robbery has lost his bid to force the State to tell him what happened to around €3.4million seized from his home.

Ted Cunningham, 68, sued Garda Commissioner Drew Harris and the CAB seeking a report explaining how the money was distributed.

The DPP and Danske Bank – the name later assumed by Northern Bank – were put on notice of the proceedings.

Mr Cunningham claimed that his property rights had been undermined when gardaí ‘unlawfully seized’ the money from his former Cork home in 2005 – following the £26.5million Belfast bank raid.

He complained that he wrote to the State a number of times seeking an explanation as to what happened to the money – but got no response.

Judge Miriam O’Regan told Mr Cunningham yesterday that he’d failed to prove that the relevant money ‘belonged to him’. Therefore, ‘on each of the grounds, the applicant [Cunningham] fails,’ she concluded.

The matter of who will pay the costs of the action will be decided today.

Mr Cunningham, of Woodbine Lodge, Farran, Co. Cork, had a prison sentence for laundering £3million overturned. At a second trial he received a five-year suspended sentence after pleading guilty to two charges of having been ‘reckless’ as to whether some £275,000 had been the proceeds of the robbery.