FBI spy wanted to be pro-wrestler

The former trucking company boss later declared himself penniless again two weeks before being plunged into a $50m (€71m) lawsuit when one of his lorries was in a road crash that killed three children.

During intensive cross-examination at the Special Criminal Court, it also emerged that his partner in a doomed gambling boat venture was guarded by a former head of a crack Geneva security services unit.

He also made at least four trips to the Cayman Islands but denied having secret funds in offshore accounts.

Mr Rupert, 51, had been in negotiations to set up the floating casino in Florida after his businesses in New York were seized by a bank because he defaulted on a mortgage loan in 1985.

After recharging, the striking 6ft 5in tall 20-stone informer told the court how he began wrestling and even had stomach surgery in a bid to succeed.

He said: “It was supposed to be pretend, but when you get thrown on your back and weigh 300lb it hurts. It was actually relatively athletic.”

Mr Rupert only abandoned the plans when he realised his lack of ability, he said.

McKevitt, 53, of Blackrock, Dundalk, County Louth, denies directing the Real IRA and being a member of the dissident republican organisation which killed 29 people in the August 1998 Omagh bomb atrocity.

Mr Rupert’s businesses had been stripped from him following his failure to repay the $30,000 he owed to the Massena Savings and Loans Association in New York state.

As he probed him about the default, Hugh Hartnett SC, for the defence, established that the witness had transferred some of his money into his secretary’s account despite owing hundreds of thousands of dollars to various creditors who had supplied lorries, trailers and other business equipment.

The barrister claimed: “You unlawfully and dishonestly diverted the funds.”

Mr Rupert agreed that he had switched the cash but denied suggestions that he had committed a crime.

“I have always considered the possibility that if anything was a criminal offence I wasn’t interested in doing it,” he said.

“I don’t believe this was a criminal offence, it was a civil offence and I was never arrested for it.”

In 1992, after re-establishing himself in the trucking business, Mr Rupert was forced to declare himself bankrupt once again.

He had earlier told the court that an horrific accident on December 27 of that year involving one of his drivers that resulted in the deaths of three children, had forced him to wind up.

But after reading out a statement in which Mr Rupert said the accident triggered a lawsuit, Mr Hartnett said bankruptcy papers had already been prepared on December 14.

He declared: “I am suggesting you told lies to the Lordships when you told them you went into bankruptcy because of the accident.

“It has been your habit when things go wrong in life to try and foist the blame on someone else.”

But Mr Rupert insisted his business was already heading for the rocks and that the crash was “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

The four-times married spy, who was paid by the FBI and MI5 to infiltrate dissident republican terror organisations, was also questioned about claims he left his third wife once she told him she was pregnant.

Mr Hartnett asked him: “Is it possible you said to her: ’You are on your own, I have no money’?”

But Mr Rupert stressed that he never believed she was pregnant and that he was already in the process of breaking up with her when she made the claim.

The defence barrister quizzed him about the timing of the announcement, which came after his ex-wife’s sister had been murdered and her brother had contracted a serious disease which Mr Rupert told the court was AIDS.

Asked by Mr Hartnett if he knew whether she had an abortion, he claimed he was still uncertain.

He added: “That was in 1994 and I have been married most of the time since 1972.

“As far as I know I have never fathered a child and here she was telling me she was pregnant. I didn’t believe her.”

Earlier the court had heard how Mr Rupert discussed setting up the gambling boat off Florida with a man named as Diego Silva, who claimed to have connections with former Chilean and Panamanian dictators Augusto Pinochet and Manuel Noriega.

An alleged Mafia boss was also brought in to help plan the scheme, but Mr Hartnett today asked about the role of another “character” known as the Colonel.

Mr Rupert said he never met the man but he was told how he was a former head of the Geneva Crack Response Team and had been employed by Mr Silva as a bodyguard.

Amid stifled laughter in the courtroom Mr Hartnett asked him to explain who this organisation was.

“Are they skydivers, are they a swimming team or are they people who go to quizzes?” he asked.

But Mr Rupert told him he thought they were a SWAT team who were the equivalent of the Garda’s elite Emergency Response Unit.

“The ERU are the people that are protecting me,” he added.

As the cross-examination became more heated Mr Hartnett asked him if he was planning to include these details in a book about the infiltration he has agreed to write once the trial is over.

Challenged to “get real,” Mr Rupert said to the barrister: “You are spinning an awfully good story here. Maybe I will write about that.”

But Mr Hartnett hit back, claiming: “No, you, sir, are spinning an awfully bad story.”

He also accused Mr Rupert of using failed business tactics in a bid to avoid paying money he owed.

“You have funded yourself on bankruptcy and the evasion of debt,” he said.

But Mr Rupert insisted under US law he was entitled to declare himself bankrupt any time he did not have the cash to meet his creditors’ demands.

Even though he admitted making four trips to the Cayman Islands he denied having a bank account in the Caribbean.

Questioned about why he had made so many short trips to the area, Mr Rupert said: “I go there to have dinner and go to the beach. I go to scuba dive and for snorkelling.”

Asked by Mr Hartnett what the Caymans are known for, Mr Rupert replied: “It has a reputation for being the Switzerland of the Caribbean.”

He agreed that its offshore banking facilities could be used to hide money but insisted he had never squirreled away cash apart from the first time he declared himself bankrupt.

The trial was adjourned until tomorrow.