A Department of Agriculture official pleading guilty to conspiring to steal £26,900 from an EU-funded scheme has agreed to help garda∅ in a wider investigation, Sligo Circuit Court was told yesterday.
Garda Insp Gerry Connolly agreed with the official's barrister there was "a larger issue involved". Insp Connolly said he saw it as "the final piece in the jigsaw" that he was willing to co-operate.
Michael Walsh, of Rhue, Tubbercurry, Co Sligo pleaded guilty to conspiring to steal a Government pay order for £26,909 in the name of a fictitious payee at a guest house in Co Sligo in December 1997. Thirteen other charges of larceny and forgery were withdrawn by the State.
The fraud was detected when a guest house owner in Tubbercurry became suspicious about mail arriving in the name of a person who booked accommodation but had not stayed with her.
Counsel for the State, Mr Alex Owens, said a recommendation of payment form which appeared to come from the Department office in Sligo, and which was later processed in Cavan, was found to be bogus. The form recommended a payment of £26,909 to a fictitious person, Mary Anderson, under a Dairy Hygiene Scheme.
The address given for her was that of a guest house in Tubbercurry. The owner of the Pine Grove guest house received a number of calls from a man giving his name as Tom Anderson.
On December 17th, 1997, two letters addressed to Mary Anderson, described in court as "junk mail", arrived at the guest house. The man rang later that day and asked if mail had arrived.
A woman arrived to collect the mail and when confronted by garda∅ said she had been promised £1,000 by an unnamed person. The Department pay order was intercepted the next day at Tubbercurry post office.
Insp Connolly said phone records showed that calls were made from Mr Walsh's mobile phone and from a public phone near his house to the guest house.