Tiarnan O'Mahoney acquitted in Anglo records conspiracy trial

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

Tiarnan O'Mahoney was acquitted at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court after Judge Martin Nolan directed the jury to find him not guilty in an Anglo Irish Bank records conspiracy trial.

The former Anglo chief operations officer had pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiring to destroy, mutilate or falsify account records and to conspiracy to defraud the Revenue Commissioners. The proceedings were reported on 1 November 2017.

The alleged offences concerned eight accounts connected to former Anglo chief executive Sean FitzPatrick and were said to have occurred between 25 March 2003 and 31 December 2004.

The prosecution had argued that former assistant manager Aoife Maguire asked the bank’s IT staff to delete accounts during a Revenue audit in 2003, and that Mr O'Mahoney was part of an agreement to alter account details and defraud Revenue. The report said IT staff archived the accounts instead; some details had been altered when the accounts were recovered.

The defence argued that the prosecution had not proved the necessary connection between Ms Maguire and Mr O'Mahoney. On 31 October 2017, Judge Nolan said the evidence of conspiracy was too tenuous and that a jury would have to speculate and fill gaps in the evidence. He said there was reason to be suspicious of Mr O'Mahoney’s activities and subsequent dealings with gardaí, but that was not enough in the absence of formal evidence of conspiracy with Ms Maguire.

Mr O'Mahoney had been convicted on the charges and sentenced to three years in 2015. The Court of Appeal quashed his conviction in March 2016 and sent him for retrial.