The High Court has prohibited the future prosecution of a young man for an alleged money-laundering offence, finding that prosecutorial delay caused him to lose significant protections he would have had if tried as a child.
Mr Justice Barr ruled on 24 May 2023 that the investigation was substantially complete within months of the alleged events, but there was no satisfactory explanation for delays before the applicant turned 18. The prosecution was pending before the Circuit Criminal Court in Wicklow.
The alleged conduct took place in April 2019, when the applicant was 16. According to the judgment, he told gardaí that people behind a social media account called “MoneyMake” had asked to use his bank account, offering him 30% of money lodged there in return for withdrawing it. He said three men collected him from school and took him to post offices. He withdrew £2,000 at one location before the bank card stopped working. He later attended a Garda station with his mother and made admissions about how money had been lodged and withdrawn. The alleged offence and those accounts were not findings of guilt.
The court found no culpable delay during 2019, when gardaí obtained bank records, examined the applicant’s phone and sought help from an officer familiar with fraud investigations. It found unexplained delay from January to mid-July 2020 and from July 2020 to March 2021, when the applicant was deemed unsuitable for the Garda Youth Diversion Programme. The court accepted that Covid-19 restrictions reasonably explained inactivity from mid-March to July 2020, but found the rollout of a new investigation system did not explain doing nothing in the first three months of 2020.
The applicant turned 18 on 1 February 2021. He was charged later that year. A District Court judge had refused jurisdiction after the Director of Public Prosecutions directed summary disposal, finding the offence unsuitable to be dealt with summarily.
Mr Justice Barr found that the lost opportunity to seek summary disposal under section 75 of the Children Act was unlikely to have changed the outcome, given the District Court’s refusal. But the loss of anonymity was significant: reporting of a conviction as an adult could remain searchable online and affect future employment. The court also held that losing mandatory child-procedure protections was itself prejudicial, even where some measures might remain available at a judge’s discretion when sentencing an adult.
Although money laundering is serious, the judge described the applicant’s alleged role as being at the lowest rung of the operation. The court concluded that the prejudice outweighed the public interest in continuing the prosecution and made the order prohibiting it. The parties were given three weeks to submit on the wording of final orders, costs and other matters; the case was listed for mention on 15 June 2023. The judgment does not state the terms of any final order subsequently made.