ADDITIONAL charges may be brought against Mr John Gilligan, who is charged under drug trafficking legislation, before he stands trial in London later this year, a prosecution lawyer has said.
Mr Nigel Peters QC was speaking outside the High Court in London yesterday following a judicial review which found there was sufficient evidence to "justify" Mr Gilligan's case going to trial in September.
Mr Peters confirmed that a voluntary bill would be sent to the High Court "at a later date" so additional charges may be brought against Mr Gilligan.
On Wednesday, two charges against Mr Gilligan were withdrawn with the consent of the defence and prosecution counsels. Mr Peters conceded that the prosecution could not establish that Mr Gilligan had acted to avoid a drug trafficking offence in England and Wales.
However, Mr Gilligan, who was arrested at Heathrow Airport in October 1996, as he attempted to travel to Amsterdam with £330,000 in his suitcase, remains charged under Section 50 (1) of the Drug Trafficking Act 1994. Section 50 relates to the control concealment or export of another's proceeds of drug trafficking.
Delivering his judgment, Mr Justice Astill told the court that although the statement of a prosecution witness (Mr Dermot Cambridge) given at an earlier committal hearing in London had been ruled inadmissible, it did not "taint" the statement of a second witness whose evidence linked Mr Gilligan with another's proceeds of drug trafficking.
The second witness, Mr John Dunne, a former operations manager for a Cork-based freight company, had identified wooden and cardboard boxes found in a Dublin warehouse linked to Mr Gilligan as "similar" to those he had imported on his behalf from the Netherlands in 1994 and 1995. However, while Mr Dunne could not say the boxes were "definitely" the same, Mr Justice Astill said his evidence should be "taken as a whole".
Mr Dunne's "inconsistent" statement should not be taken to disregard his entire account of events, he said, but should be "set in context" alongside his identification of "Joe" and "others" whom Mr Dunne said were involved with Mr Gilligan in setting up imports from the Netherlands through Cork.
Although the defence had argued that the money in Mr Gilligan's suitcase at Heathrow was his own, Mr Justice Astill said he was "not convinced this is so".
Mr Gilligan will appear at Woolwich Crown Court on Wednesday.