The Court of Appeal has dismissed Mary Cash’s appeal against proceeds-of-crime orders concerning a house at 7 Harpur’s Lane, Portlaoise, which she claimed was her family home.
The appeal concerned only that property, bought for €100,000 in cash in 2018. The High Court had made orders under the Proceeds of Crime Act, including prohibiting Ms Cash from disposing of or dealing with listed property and appointing a receiver to dispose of property other than the dwelling house. The Court of Appeal did not rehear the original application. It considered whether Ms Cash had shown that the High Court judge erred in finding that the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) had met the civil standard of proof.
CAB’s Chief Bureau Officer said he believed the house represented proceeds of crime or had been acquired with property connected to crime. CAB relied, among other matters, on unexplained cash lodgements and the timing of the payments used to buy the house. Those were CAB’s allegations and evidence, not findings made in the appeal about criminal conduct.
Ms Cash denied that the property in CAB’s application was proceeds of crime. She said she and her husband earned about €150,000 doing casual work in Australia between October 2015 and March 2016, and that the money funded the purchase. In a later affidavit, she referred to deposits of AUS$125,740 into an Australian account between March and December 2015, and said she used the money to buy the house.
A CAB investigator’s review of the Australian accounts found that the funds were transferred to Ms Cash’s Irish account but that the balance had fallen to €2,771.12 by October 2017. The investigator said later lodgements exceeding €90,000 were made between November 2017 and April 2018, followed by further lodgements in August to October 2018. The house purchase was paid from the latter funds. The investigator concluded the Australian money had been spent before the house was bought.
The Court of Appeal said Ms Cash’s affidavits stated that the Australian earnings funded the house, rather than that the money had been traded over time through horses or other goods. It found no real conflict in the affidavit evidence requiring cross-examination. It also held that CAB had established a prima facie case, shifting the burden to Ms Cash to rebut it, and that she had not demonstrated an error in the High Court judge’s approach or findings.
The appeal was dismissed. The decision leaves the High Court orders concerning the house in place; the Court of Appeal made no broader determination in this appeal about the other items on the original schedule.