The High Court has remitted part of a confiscation order against Ezenwata Izundu to the Circuit Court, finding that it had not properly considered how much of the order could be realised from him. The remittal is limited to that question; the High Court did not set aside the Circuit Court’s assessment of the value of his drug-trafficking proceeds.
The order, made on 13 March 2012 under the Criminal Justice Act 1994, required Mr Izundu to pay €412,579.82. He sought judicial review, arguing that the Circuit Court had failed to follow the statutory process and that the State should have disclosed in advance the amount it sought and how it calculated it.
Mr Izundu had been convicted of drug dealing and sentenced to four years in prison in 2010. The judgment records that 160g of cocaine was found when he was arrested and that more than €700,000 had passed through his bank accounts. He said some funds were entrusted to him to buy machinery for others. The State considered the money to be drug-trafficking proceeds. At the confiscation hearing, the Circuit Court judge rejected Mr Izundu’s explanations as “grossly unsatisfactory”.
High Court judge Mr Justice Barrett said the Circuit Court’s assessment of the value of the proceeds under section 6(1) was reached through a fair process. But section 6(2) also required the court to consider whether the amount that could be realised was lower, and to reduce the order if so. The transcript, he said, showed the hearing focused on the value of the proceeds, without proper regard to that separate question.
The State had acknowledged that the funds had been “lodged and dissipated” and said it did not know whether Mr Izundu still held them elsewhere. The High Court said it was difficult to see how the Circuit Court could have found no significant difference between the proceeds’ assessed value and what could be realised. It held that the failure to address section 6(2) was an error of law that denied Mr Izundu the process and basic fairness to which he was entitled.
The High Court remitted only the section 6(2) issue: whether the €412,579.82 order should be reduced. It declined to declare that the State must always provide the requested amount and calculation basis before confiscation proceedings. The judge said it was for the trial court to ensure basic procedural fairness, and found no basis to conclude that the Circuit Court proceedings were deficient on that point.