The High Court has found that about €75,000 frozen in Graham Whelan’s bank account was caught by proceeds of crime legislation, after concluding that he obtained the money as part of a money laundering exercise.
In a judgment delivered on 19 January 2022, Mr Justice Alexander Owens ruled on the Criminal Assets Bureau’s application under section 3(1) of the Proceeds of Crime Act 1996. He found that the evidence established the balance was property acquired by Whelan in connection with proceeds of crime. The judgment’s concluding passage records that finding; the supplied source does not set out a separate final order or any distribution of the funds.
The €75,000 had been transferred into Whelan’s Allied Irish Banks account on 18 January 2019 by John Wilson, who had received €110,000 in compensation in April 2018. Wilson is married to Whelan’s aunt. The loan agreement was signed on 1 February 2019, the day after gardaí found Whelan in a Dublin hotel room with, among other items, cash, controlled drugs and a watch worth €28,000. Whelan had been convicted of money laundering offences relating to the cash and watch.
The Bureau argued that Whelan obtained Wilson’s money to put clean funds into his account and intended to repay him with proceeds of crime. Whelan’s affidavits described the loan as an investment in a business, Imperium Investments Limited. In interview, he said it was intended to buy a plot of land, but did not identify where the site was. The judge found his explanations vague and unconvincing and accepted the Bureau’s evidence about the intended money laundering.
The judgment also examined earlier payments Wilson made for the Wheelie Clean business, associated with Whelan’s friend Keith Murphy. The judge found, on the balance of probabilities, that most of the cash Wilson used to pay a builder for an extension to his home in 2018 came from Whelan and originated in criminal proceeds linked to those earlier payments.
The court did not decide whether Wilson was an honest participant who had been duped or knowingly joined the arrangement. It said Wilson was not a party to this application and that whether he has a valid claim to the €75,000 remains for another day. The judgment also rejected the argument that a District Court consent order had conclusively established Whelan’s entitlement: that order was not produced, and the High Court said the issues before the two courts were different.