A car dealer will seek a High Court injunction today to restrain the Sunday World publishing claims that he is an underworld figure who had introduced one of Ireland's leading drug dealers to the late model Katy French. Lee Cullen says these and other claims published by the newspaper are false.
Mr Cullen, a married father of two from Starwood, Coolmine, Saggart, Co Dublin, is seeking an injunction restraining the newspaper from publishing any more such allegations.
In the High Court yesterday, Mr Justice Frank Clarke granted his lawyers permission to notify the newspaper of the intention to bring the injunction proceedings today.
Paul O'Higgins SC, with James O'Callaghan, for Mr Cullen, said the newspaper last Sunday printed the latest in a number of articles in which it falsely alleged Mr Cullen was involved in criminal activity and/or involved in major money laundering and/or drug trafficking.
This article also stated that Mr Cullen was part of Ms French's social circle and that Mr Cullen had introduced her and her former boyfriend, Marcus Sweeney, to a man described as one of the country's biggest drug traffickers.
The article also claimed she was regularly driven around in high-powered cars supplied by Mr Cullen.
In an affidavit, Mr Cullen said he had no criminal convictions apart from motoring offences and he knew Ms French because her car broke down six weeks ago and he had lent her a replacement vehicle.
He said he never drove her around in expensive cars and does not know the man described as a drug trafficker.
Mr Cullen said he had made a settlement in February 2006 with the Criminal Assets Bureau after he recognised he had an ongoing tax problem that needed to be sorted out.
The taxes he owed were on income and "capital gains that I had legitimately earned and were not the proceeds of criminal activity", he said.
He had instructed his solicitors to write to say he had been defamed and to desist from publishing further material but the Sunday World refused to do so, he said.
If an injunction was not granted, his right to a good name was "effectively being crushed", he said.
Mr Justice Clarke said the Sunday World could be notified by phone of short service of the injunction proceedings, returnable to the court for today.