THE High Court in London will decide tomorrow if Mr John Gilligan will face trial for drug trafficking later this year.
A judicial review hearing yesterday was told that two charges against Mr Gilligan, under Section 49(1) of the Drug Trafficking Act 1994, had been withdrawn by consent.
Mr Gilligan, arrested at Heathrow Airport on October 6th, 1996 with £330,000 concealed in his suitcase, had been charged under the Act with the concealment of money which represented the proceeds of drug trafficking, and with attempting to remove that money from Britain.
He remains charged under Section 50 (1) of the same Act, concerning money which relates to another's proceeds from drug trafficking.
During the morning session Mr Nigel Peters, for the prosecution, told Lord Justice Pill and Mr Justice Astill that the charges against Mr Gilligan under Section 49 (1) would be withdrawn because it was not possible to establish that he had acted to avoid a drug trafficking offence in England and Wales.
However the Section 50 (1) charge, the court heard, "has a very wide description" and dealt with the proceeds of drug trafficking "anywhere in the world".
Mr Peters highlighted the evidence given to Belmarsh Magistrates Court in January this year by Mr John Dunne, a former operations manager of a Cork based freight company.
He told the court that he first met Mr Gilligan in March or April of 1994, to arrange the transportation of "spare parts for trucks" between Holland and Ireland.
In January, Mr Dunne also identified wooden and cardboard boxes he had imported through Cork for Mr Gilligan. However, under cross examination Mr Dunne conceded he was not certain that the boxes were the same as those seized by gardai in October 1996 at a Dublin warehouse linked to Mr Gilligan. Ms Clare Montgomery, for the defence, pointed out that Mr Dunne had never been able to say "for definite" that the boxes from the warehouse were the same boxes he had imported for Mr Gilligan.