The High Court has refused to stop the prosecution of an anonymised man facing 49 charges arising from alleged false documents used in loan applications to KBC Bank and Permanent TSB.
Mr Justice Barry O’Donnell ruled on June 17, 2026, that the applicant, identified as G.D., had not established the exceptional circumstances required to prohibit his pending Circuit Criminal Court trial.
The charges concern allegations that G.D. made or presented false instruments between December 2016 and October 2017 with a view to inducing the two banks to make loans. He denies the charges.
G.D. argued that a fair trial was no longer possible because of alleged failures in prosecution disclosure, the loss of CCTV footage, prosecutorial delay and concerns about evidence gathered during a 2017 search of his home. He had previously raised similar issues before the Circuit Criminal Court in July 2025, where an application for a permanent stay was refused.
O’Donnell J said modern case law places primary responsibility for protecting the fairness of a criminal trial on the trial judge. Judicial review should stop a prosecution only in exceptional, clear-cut cases where there is a real risk of unfairness that cannot be addressed during the trial.
The court found that the Circuit Court judge had given adequate reasons for refusing the earlier stay application and had been entitled to conclude that disclosure was satisfactory and that the remaining issues could be addressed at trial.
G.D. specifically complained that CCTV from Permanent TSB branches had not been preserved. Material later disclosed indicated that the 2017 footage had been retained for only 28 days and was unavailable when sought in 2021. The High Court held that the effect of the missing footage must be assessed by the trial judge in the context of the evidence actually presented.
Similar conclusions were reached concerning the search warrant, chain of custody, Garda records, electronic evidence and G.D.'s earlier mental health detention.
The judicial review application was therefore refused and the criminal trial was permitted to proceed. The court made no finding on G.D.'s guilt or innocence.