Woman sues 'Sunday World ' over £26.5m raid articles

A WOMAN has sued for libel over a number of Sunday Worldarticles which, she claims, meant she was involved in laundering the proceeds of the IRA's £26.5 million robbery of the Northern Bank in 2004, the largest bank robbery in Irish history.

Kathryn Nelson (61) is claiming damages, including aggravated and exemplary damages, over a front-page article headlined “Busted”, with the sub-heading “Flynn’s female pal quizzed for hours by cops in Provo money laundering probe”.

That article was accompanied by a large photo of her and smaller photographs of Phil Flynn – the former trade union leader and ICC Bank chairman – and another man said to be a Bulgarian government minister. Ms Nelson has also sued over related articles in the same edition of the newspaper, published over four pages under the strap line “The SF/IRA crime machine” and including a headline “Phil Flynn, his close female pal and the dodgy Cork financier”.

In evidence yesterday, Ms Nelson, who worked outside Ireland between 1990 and 2005, said she could no longer do her work as a diplomatic liaison officer due to the articles.

“My life is over,” she said.

She had “no respect” from people she had worked among, could not walk into embassies and she believed she was “probably on a terrorist list”.

She was also “appalled” to be associated with the Sinn Féin-IRA robbery.

The action by Ms Nelson, Huginstown, Co Kilkenny, against Sunday Newspapers Ltd, publishers of the Sunday World, opened at the High Court yesterday before Ms Justice Elizabeth Dunne and a jury and continues today.

The articles complained of referred to the Garda investigation into the laundering of money from the Northern Bank raid. They referred to Ms Nelson having met, in Dublin and Bulgaria, Phil Flynn and other persons, including Ted Cunningham from Cork, who was later convicted of money-laundering offences.

They also referred to Ms Nelson being arrested and questioned by gardaí.

In outlining the case, Michael O’Higgins SC, for Ms Nelson, said the issue was the meaning of the articles. It was his case the articles would give the average reader the impression that Ms Nelson was involved in a very serious and sophisticated operation “cleaning” the proceeds of the Northern Bank robbery.

The Sunday Worldargued the articles did not bear those alleged meanings but instead meant Ms Nelson was "an innocent abroad" who had fallen under Garda suspicion and had to be checked out because she was in the company of certain persons, Mr O'Higgins said.

The court heard Ms Nelson was born in Athy, Co Kildare, and studied English and communications in university. She worked as a teacher in Co Kildare for 11 years, during which time she met Mr Flynn in his capacity as a trade union official in connection with her efforts to secure a permanent teaching post.

She later worked as a teacher of English in Libya for six years where she did diplomatic studies. After Libya, she worked for MacKenzie International in London liaising with several embassies, including the Bulgarian embassy.

After she became ill in 2004 and underwent surgery, she resigned from MacKenzie, based herself in Bulgaria and worked as a liaison officer between diplomats and others for persons doing business abroad.

In her evidence, Ms Nelson said she was not a close friend of Mr Flynn but, in the context of her work in Bulgaria, was contacted by him, then chairman of Bank of Scotland, about setting up mortgage houses in Bulgaria.

Ms Nelson said she had no objection to gardaí doing their job and they spoke to her about Mr Flynn, Mr Cunningham, the IRA and about her work.

She answered their questions, was later released and never charged. When she learned about the Sunday World article, she was sick, angry and frightened.

When Oisín Quinn SC, for the Sunday World,put it to Ms Nelson the word "busted" meant arrested, she said the word was slang and she would never use it.

Why had the paper not used the word arrested and, when other papers reported her arrest and release in "one-third of a paragraph", why had it taken five pages in the Sunday World"with Sinn Féin-IRA over my head?" she asked. She agreed she had received €16,000 from Mr Cunningham for the work she had done but said she had spent much more than that.