The wife of Martin ‘The Viper’ Foley told a judge on Tuesday that if the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) is permitted to sell their home in Cashel Avenue, Kimmage, Dublin, then she and her nine-year-old daughter will be left homeless.
Foley, described as a 74-year-old pensioner, is fighting CAB’s demands for possession of his home to meet part of his long standing tax debt which now totals close on €1 million.
He said he and his wife have lived together since they were married in 2013, a year prior to the judgment against him.
Barristers Keith Farry and John Temple, counsel for Foley and his wife, Sonia, told Judge Fiona O’Sullivan in the Circuit Civil Court on Tuesday that Mrs Foley was claiming a half-share interest in what was her family home while her husband had, among other suggestions, offered CAB weekly payments towards paying off the outstanding debt.
Shaula Connaughton-Deeny, who appeared with State Solicitor Emma Griffin for CAB, said judgment had already been obtained against Mr Foley and the Bureau was now seeking a well-charging order against the property at 114 Cashel Avenue to facilitate its sale. Judge O’Sullivan said she would deliver judgment next week.
The judge heard that while the Sheriff had attended at the Foley property to seize goods and chattels all that had been raised was €2,503.
Ms Connaughton-Deeny said Mr Foley was the registered owner of the Kimmage property with his late wife, Pauline Foley. A €916,960 High Court judgment obtained by CAB was made up of unpaid arrears on income tax and interest.
Foley says he is willing to engage in a mortgage to rent scheme whereby CAB can sell the house but he would live in it with his wife and child and make weekly or monthly contributions through a “payment plan.” He was also willing to hand over to CAB “the benefit of two defamation actions” he is taking against the BBC and Penguin Books.
Mr Farry told the court today that Mr Foley had been led to believe that CAB and the Revenue Commissioners had agreed not to pursue him for the outstanding €1 million tax bill because he had made a deal with them. He alleged he had been told if he didn’t pursue the Gilligan gunman Charles Bowden for €120,000 CAB would not pursue him for the tax debt.
Bowden, who is now in the witness protection programme, was responsible for the weapons used by John Gilligan’s drugs gang and has given evidence against Gilligan and Brian Meehan in the Special Criminal Court. Meehan is still serving a life sentence for the murder of Veronica Guerin.
He said if he had received the €120,000 he was due when he won his case against Charles Bowden, he would have given that to the Criminal Assets Bureau and this would have gone “a long way”, with the additional contributions to pay off the original €178,000 debt. He said his home was not the proceeds of crime.
His wife, who is on social welfare, claimed she was not liable in any way for the debt owed to CAB and pointed out that the house was her home and only property. “There is no reality to me purchasing another home,” she said in written evidence. “Eviction would make my daughter and I homeless.”
Ms Connaughton-Deeny told the court that no explanation had been offered as to why Sonya Foley could not work.
“She says she’s on disability, we’ve no evidence of that, their evidence is vague and bare at best,” she said. “We have no evidence of bank accounts or other assets they may have, how they are all surviving without any income?”
“There is nothing vouching anything they say before the court” she said.
Martin Foley has more than 60 previous convictions including for assault robbery and possession of weapons. He was part of the criminal gang led by Martin Cahill who was known as the General and has survived several attempts on his life.
Mr Farry said Mr Foley had been led to believe his tax debt would not be pursued and now after all these years it was “unfair and disproportionate” to do so. He had remarried and the seizure of their home would have a detrimental effect on his current wife and child.
