A Circuit Court Judge has ordered that the £55,890 seized from a convicted drug dealer at Dublin Airport in October 1998 be forfeited to the State.
Judge Elizabeth Dunne said she had heard enough evidence to make the assumption that the cash seized was another person's proceeds or was intended for use in drug-trafficking.
Mr Kevin Murtagh, a Customs official, told Mr Fergal Foley, for the State, that Roy Monk (34), of Enfield, London, was stopped at Dublin Airport with a black hold-all bag on October 6th, 1998, as he was about to board a flight to Spain. Traces of cocaine and ephedrine were found on the £55,890 in notes that was concealed in the bag.
Monk told Customs officials that he had no income other than unemployment and disability benefit and the money seized was the proceeds of a gambling debt from an Irishman.
Monk boarded the flight to Spain and was to return on October 14th, but he was not on the return flight.
Mr Murtagh said that in 1997 Monk was arrested with another man, Mr Philip Way, at Dover,after getting off a ferry from Calais. Concealed in their van was 13 kilos of cannabis.
In 1999, following a trial, Monk was acquitted but Way was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison.
During Monk's stay in Ireland in October 1998, he had made 15 calls to Way from his hotel room at the Red Cow Hotel.
On November 18th, 1999, 19 bags of cannabis were found in Monk's flat following a surveillance operation by the London Metropolitan Police. He was convicted of that offence on May 11th, 2000, and jailed for three years.
Mr Padraig Dwyer, for Monk, said the State's application for the forfeiture of the cash was being made on the basis of very scant evidence, which was "innuendo, hearsay and prejudicial".
Judge Elizabeth Dunne said there was a number of relevant facts that she had to take into consideration before she made an order about the cash.
The evidence she had heard led her to the conclusion that on the balance of probabilities the sum concerned in this case directly or indirectly represented a person's proceeds of or was intended for use in drug-trafficking.