Convicted Ted Cunningham on 10 counts of laundering money that came from the 26.5 million pound (then €38 million, $50 million) robbery

Convicted Ted Cunningham on 10 counts of laundering money that came from the 26.5 million pound (then €38 million, $50 million) robbery of Northern Bank's central vault in downtown Belfast on Dec. 20, 2004.The raid — the biggest cash robbery in history at the time, and still by far the biggest ever on the island of Ireland — involved raids by armed, masked gangs on the homes of two Northern Bank employees with high-level security clearance. Both helped the robbers clear out the vault because their families were held hostage and threatened with death.Police accusations of Irish Republican Army involvement helped wreck months of diplomacy aimed at coaxing British Protestant leaders into a peacemaking coalition with the IRA-linked Sinn Fein party, which represents most of the Irish Catholic minority here. The two sides eventually came together in May 2007.Belfast analysts say the IRA used much of the Northern Bank millions to fund a happy retirement for veteran members before the group disarmed and renounced violence in 2005, commitments that helped restore Protestant faith in power-sharing.
Witnesses in court Friday said Cunningham, 60, nervously fondled Catholic rosary beads as the jury returned its 11-1 verdict following a four-year investigation and 10-week trial in Cork Circuit Criminal Court. The judge, Cornelius Murphy, denied bail and set sentencing for April 25.Cunningham and his son Timothy — who pleaded guilty last month to four counts of money-laundering — could face maximum prison sentences of 14 years.
The elder Cunningham ran an unregulated private bank, Chesterton Finance Ltd., out of his rural Cork home that offered double-digit interest rates to depositors and charged borrowers more than double that.One of his business partners was Phil Flynn, a former vice president and treasurer of Sinn Fein, who was arrested on suspicion of involvement in laundering the Northern Bank millions but never faced charges.In February 2005 police searching for Northern Bank money raided Cunningham's home and found more than 2.3 million pounds in British bank notes — many of them stamped as coming from Belfast-based Northern Bank, on the far end of Ireland — hidden in bags in his basement.During the trial, the jury was shown the police's videotaped interrogations of Cunningham, during which he admitted receiving nearly 5 million pounds in four deliveries from someone driving a Northern Ireland-registered car. Cunningham told the detectives he suspected that the money came from the robbery, and had contemplated burning it.But during his weeklong court testimony, Cunningham insisted he made false admissions because police had threatened to leak claims that he was fingering IRA members in the conspiracy.

Cunningham insisted to the judge and jury that the British money came from three Bulgarian investors — whom he declined to identify — who wanted his help to buy an Irish quarry. Cunningham said he and Flynn had traveled together to Bulgaria to mull setting up a bank there in alliance with the unnamed Bulgarians, not the IRA.

But the jury instead accepted testimony from several detectives, who said Cunningham had pleaded for the interrogation-room videotape to be turned off so that he could tell them the truth without the IRA finding out.Detectives said during these unrecorded sessions, Cunningham expressed fears that Flynn would send the IRA to kill him if he didn't stick to the Bulgarian cover story in court.Police also provided documentary and witness evidence from several business friends of Cunningham who received mysterious six-figure payments in British currency in the weeks before the 2005 police raid on his home — followed by panicked warnings to get rid of it before police found their money, too. Other British cash was used to buy luxury cars for Flynn's sister and a former Sinn Fein politician in Cork.Another recipient, Don Blaney, burned mounds of money in his fireplace as police were still searching Cunningham's home — and sent embers of British currency fluttering into his neighbors' gardens. Blaney, 51, was convicted in November of possessing 220 rounds of ammunition found at his home, but was not charged in relation to the money because it was destroyed.