National Asset Management Agency (Nama)<\/a>, which was set up by the Irish government to deal with toxic property loans after the banking crisis in 2008.<\/p>\nMr Cushnahan, a business consultant and former member of Nama\u2019s Northern Ireland advisory committee, is charged with fraud for allegedly failing to disclose information to Nama between April 1st and November 7th, 2013.<\/p>\n
Mr Coulter, a solicitor, is charged with made a false representation to a law firm on or around August 13th, 2014, namely a \u00a39 million invoice. He also faces two counts of concealing or transferring criminal property on various dates in 2014.<\/p>\n
A further fraud charge relates to Mr Coulter dishonestly making a false representation to a law firm on or around September 11th, 2014, by causing an invoice of \u00a37.2 million to be issued.<\/p>\n
Both men are accused of making a false representation to Nama and a law firm in April 2014, with the intention of \u201cmaking a gain for themselves or another\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Cushnahan applied for reporting restrictions to be imposed during the trial but his bid was refused by a judge three months ago, who said there was \u201csubstantial public interest\u201d in the trial.<\/p>\n
His co-accused did not seek to have reporting restrictions applied.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Madam Justice McBride outlined a series of ground rules to jurors and said it is wrong for them to receive information from other sources during the trial, whether \u201cthat\u2019s speaking to someone or engaging in research, for example, the internet, or elsewhere\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t come to a decision until you\u2019ve heard all the evidence, you\u2019ve heard the closing speeches from both the prosecution and the defence, and you\u2019ve heard me giving direction on the law,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo don\u2019t jump to conclusions before that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The judge told the jury that they should take \u201cno account\u201d of any media reports on the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou decide the case on the evidence you hear in this court.\u201d<\/p>\n
She cited \u201chousekeeping matters\u201d as the reason for putting the prosecution\u2019s case back until Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The trial of two prominent businessman accused of fraud over a \u00a31 billion (\u20ac1.2 billion) loan deal will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4501,61,60,27141,43,2443],"class_list":["post-40873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-belfast","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-nama","tag-news","tag-northern-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40873","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=40873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}