A retired Garda superintendent is to stand trial accused of facilitating a crime gang, perverting the course of justice and corruption, while two other serving officers face connected charges.<\/p>\n
John Murphy (65), facing 12 charges, Garda Manus Keane, facing a single criminal allegation and Det Aidan Stratford, who has 170 charges, were arrested on Wednesday following an investigation by the Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (NBCI).<\/p>\n
They appeared at Dublin District Court on Wednesday, when NBCI Det Sgt S\u00edle White and Det Sgt Paul Sweeney gave evidence that the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) had issued a direction for trial on indictment at a higher level on their combined 183 charges. However, the precise venue was not divulged during the hearing.<\/p>\n
A six-week adjournment was sought to prepare the prosecution\u2019s books of evidence, which must be served on them before granting a trial order.<\/p>\n
The former superintendent stood silently with his arms folded during his hearing and did not enter a plea. White said Murphy was charged just after 10am and \u201cmade no reply after caution\u201d to his 12 charges.<\/p>\n
Murphy and Stratford face allegations covering five years.<\/p>\n
It is alleged they participated in, or contributed to, activities intended to facilitate serious offences by a criminal organisation, between April 12th, 2016, and September 29th, 2021, contrary to section 72 of the Criminal Justice Act 2006.<\/p>\n
They could not apply for bail on this charge, which requires a High Court decision, and were remanded in custody to appear again next Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Murphy has seven separate bribery charges under the Criminal Justice (Corruption Offences) Act 2018.<\/p>\n
It is alleged that on various dates between July 2020 and September 2021, Murphy \u201ccorruptly\u201d agreed to accept gifts, advantages, or inducements. These were allegedly rewards for performing acts related to his \u201coffice, position or employment\u201d.<\/p>\n
The ex-senior garda also faced four common law charges for communicating with a serving member of An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na in a manner intended to pervert the course of public justice from April 2016 to January 2018.<\/p>\n
Defence solicitor Daniel Hanahoe said his client was reserving his legal aid application.<\/p>\n
Keane (46), from south Dublin, is charged with a single offence under section 62 of the An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na Act 2005. It states that on November 13th, 2014, he, a serving member of An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na, disclosed confidential information to Aidan Stratford, pertaining to a different individual.<\/p>\n
According to his charge, the information was \u201cobtained in the course of carrying out your duties in your office or employment, knowing that the disclosure of said information was likely to have a harmful effect.\u201d<\/p>\n
He did not address the court, and there was no objection to his bail on condition he provide a contact phone number, notify garda\u00ed of any address change, and have no contact, directly or indirectly, with any other parties or witnesses in the case.<\/p>\n
He met the NBCI officer by arrangement shortly after 8am to be charged. Keane has not indicated a plea.<\/p>\n
Both he and Murphy appeared before Judge Brendan O\u2019Reilly during the morning court sitting.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Reilly imposed reporting restrictions on his address, set cashless bail at \u20ac3,000, and ordered him to appear again on June 12th. His defence counsel, Paddy Jackson, asked that the question of legal aid be reserved so documents could be brought to court on the next date.<\/p>\n
Stratford (50), from north Dublin, was brought before Judge Michele Finan during the evening court sitting.<\/p>\n
His other alleged offences included disclosing confidential information or corruptly accepting a gift, inducement, or reward on February 25th, 2020, for performing an act related to his position.<\/p>\n
Sweeney told the court that the accused was arrested just after 11am and charged with the 170 offences. The court heard that \u201cI deny the charge\u201d was his reply.<\/p>\n
He did not address the court, sat leafing through his bundle of charges, and spoke only to consult his solicitor, Damien Coffey.<\/p>\n
Coffey confirmed that his client would apply for High Court bail in due course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A retired Garda superintendent is to stand trial accused of facilitating a crime gang, perverting the course of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-389079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}