A previous member of Fine Gael, Frank Kilbride, aged 70, residing in Aughakilmore, Ballinalee, Co Longford, faced a court hearing at Longford Circuit Court last Friday for charges associated with money laundering. This involved over €2.6 million being channelled through various businesses connected to Cyril ‘Dublin Jimmy’ McGuinness. Judge Kenneth Connolly, on Friday, suggested that a sentence involving imprisonment would be handed out the following week.
Kilbride previously confessed to three offences of laundering an amount equal to €2,604,564.05 in total. This occurred through three separate bank accounts, between October 2017 and March 2018.
In testimony, Det Garda Rhona Bohan stated that numerous searches were executed in November 2019 within this jurisdiction, Northern Ireland, and Buxton, UK, following warrants related to the kidnapping and attack of Quinn Industrial Holdings director Kevin Lunney. A partial AIB bank statement was uncovered during these investigations, associated with WOI Plant Hire & Supplies Ltd, which led them to another enterprise, TJO Developments.
On November 29th, 2019, Kilbride approached the guards to give a statement regarding TJO Developments after he was issued documents from the Revenue Commissioners about an overdue VAT invoice.
Kilbride informed the gardaí that a third party approached him in early 2017 with interest in purchasing any of his businesses. Consequently, TJO Developments was sold to this individual for €3,000. A few months later, Kilbride was notified by a female worker from a bank in north Longford that the account for TJO Developments was still active under his name, with money transactions ongoing. The bank employee advised Kilbride to alter the account details.
After alterations were made to his account, a man named ‘Dublin Jimmy’, accompanied by two other men, one from Louth and another from Northern Ireland, came to Mr Kilbride’s house to discuss the account changes. Mr Kilbride was informed by Dublin Jimmy that a total of €100 remained in the account, intended for medical costs, which Mr Kilbride perceived as a threat.
When Mr Kilbride reached out to the third person who obtained the account on Dublin Jimmy’s behalf – later revealed to be Cyril McGuinness – he was advised to pay no mind to Dublin Jimmy’s bluster. In the course of the police investigation into the matter, two Irish bank accounts connected to TJO Developments surfaced. One of them has transferred a sum of €1,727,427.28, whilst the other shifted €867,143.80 to different companies across Ireland, the UK, and Europe.
There was also a detection of a third bank account, which was Mr Kilbride’s personal account and implicated in the transfer of approximately €10,000. The senior counsel for Mr Kilbride, Vincent Heneghan, presented Mr Kilbride’s case as a tale of a man who acted foolishly out of desperation and became an essential part of a larger scheme.
The judge warned that there didn’t appear to be an option to deal with the case outside of a custodial setting, considering the vast €2.6 million involved, and Mr Kilbride shouldn’t harbour any hope for a non-custodial sentence. Mr Kilbride was remanded into custody and will have his judgement delivered on Tuesday before Longford Circuit Court. The judge voiced his regret over the inevitable custodial sentence due to the enormous amount of money at stake.