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| Veteran IRA chief ‘Slab’ Murphy faces prison for tax evasion | Veteran IRA chief ‘Slab’ Murphy faces prison for tax evasion |
| (about 2 hours later) | |
| DUBLIN — The longtime chief of the Irish Republican Army, one of the outlawed group’s most feared and secretive figures, received an 18-month prison sentence Friday for tax evasion a decade after police discovered a fortune hidden inside hay bales on his border farm. | |
| Thomas “Slab” Murphy, 66, denied all charges against him and vowed to appeal the verdict at Ireland’s Special Criminal Court, a three-judge panel that hears IRA-related cases without a jury because of the risk of intimidation. His statement called media reports of his wealth and IRA involvement “utterly untrue.” | |
| Irish analysts have drawn parallels between Murphy’s prosecution for tax fraud with the case of Chicago crime boss Al Capone, who likewise avoided conviction for his gang’s many killings but couldn’t account for his wealth. Until now, Murphy has been arrested several times but never successfully prosecuted for any crime. | |
| Murphy could have faced up to five years in prison and a 100,000 euro ($110,000) fine, but judges said they had taken his age and lack of previous criminal record into account. Their judgment stressed they based his punishment on his status as a farmer, not an IRA figure. | |
| Even proving the tax evasion case proved a titanic struggle that required Irish investigators to win several Murphy appeals all the way to the Supreme Court. | |
| Murphy’s farm straddles the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and an escape tunnel runs beneath the property in each direction. He admitted he filed no tax returns in either country from 1996 to 2004, but claimed to have no declarable income of his own as other family members handled all business affairs. | |
| When hundreds of police and customs officers swooped on his property in March 2006, they seized evidence of a diversified racketeering empire: 8,000 liters (2,100 gallons) of fuel and a fleet of tanker trucks for smuggling it; 30,000 smuggled cigarettes and crates of liquor; briefcases and boxes full of coded ledgers documenting his sales of cattle in markets island-wide; and garbage bags filled with cash in three currencies and checks exceeding 1.15 million euros ($1.37 million at the time). | |
| Ireland’s Criminal Assets Bureau, which seized the cash and other assets, testified during Murphy’s trial that it estimated his tax liability on illicit trade at 5.34 million euros ($5.9 million). But Friday’s judgment concerned only his failure to declare earnings from legal cattle dealings and other farm income, chiefly government subsidy payments. | |
| In his statement, Murphy denied owning any property and said he had no savings. | |
| Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. | Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |