Three Ulster Bank messengers who stole hundreds of thousand of pounds they were meant to burn were each jailed for 2½ years yesterday as the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland criticised the bank's "rather lax and slipshod procedures".
However, Sir Brian Kerr told the three, a former police reservist, Andrew Godfrey (43), Hampton Park, Bangor, and two Belfast men, Liam O'Rawe (42), Downfine Park, and Paul O'Hare (40), Linden Gardens, that the bank's failures could not excuse their serious breach of trust in succumbing to temptation.
But the judge said he was satisfied that the three messengers, who stole a total of £770,119.19, from the Ulster Bank's burn room in its former Waring Street headquarters in Belfast, had received little from the remarkable opportunity which had presented itself to them and that the vast bulk of the money had been recovered.
Sir Brian also said that, given their clear records and the small likelihood of them re-offending, their jailing would bear more heavily upon them all, given the fall of grace it represented for them all.