The multi-million euro theft trial of former solicitor Michael Lynn had to be heard twice after the jury in the first trial failed to reach a verdict.
Now, 16 years after the alleged crimes and after two trials spanning a combined total of 24 weeks, the Lynn case is finally at an end.
The first Dublin Circuit Criminal Court trial, which took place in the spring of 2022, was heavily laden with financial detail – and often dull – until Lynn took the stand and alleged he had been involved in secret property deals with senior Irish bankers.
Lynn took the stand 13 weeks into his trial and “stunned” the prosecution and trial judge with allegations he had permission from the banks to take out multiple mortgages on the same properties.
Former Irish Nationwide chief Michael Fingleton loomed large in Lynn’s testimony relating to “secret deals”, in which he alleged the banks permitted him to use the loan money for his overseas property developments.
Lynn alleged that Mr Fingleton was involved in a secret profit share agreement with him in which Irish Nationwide gave him a loan but which he used to develop a site in Portugal – with Mr Fingleton allegedly set to profit from it personally.
Lynn claimed that evidence backing up these secret deals, or “off the book agreements”, was contained on emails in a server that was in his practice when it was raided in 2007 and which was now missing.
His allegations of secret deals were dismissed by the prosecution as a “fabricated pack of lies” and “inherently implausible”.
However, after hearing evidence for 16 weeks, the jury in the first trial was unable to reach a verdict and had to be discharged.
The second trial got underway in October this year. Set down for a shorter period of eight weeks due to the fact that it was now officially accepted by Lynn that he had received the monies, the trial still spent several weeks listening to evidence from bank officials.
Lynn took the stand during both trials and robustly defended the charges against him.
In the first trial he spent nine days in the stand and gave colourful evidence of his four-and-a-half years in a “hellhole” Brazilian prison, which was essentially run by inmates and where he said he witnessed a gay prisoner being beheaded.
In the second trial he spent just over three days in the stand, with less detail on his time abroad.
The missing server did not feature as heavily in the second trial, with fresh prosecution witnesses brought in from the Law Society and the ‘Capel building’ – Lynn’s office – to give evidence on that issue. Its whereabouts remain unknown.
Lynn was extradited from Brazil in 2018 and has been on bail while fighting the charges against him.
The charges
Lynn (55) of Millbrook Court, Red Cross, Co Wicklow was accused of the theft of around €27 million from seven financial institutions. He pleaded not guilty to 21 counts of theft in Dublin between October 23, 2006 and April 20, 2007, when he was working as a solicitor and property developer.
It was the prosecution case that Lynn obtained multiple mortgages on the same properties in a situation where banks were unaware that other institutions were also providing finance. These properties included his €5.5 million Howth property ‘Glenlion’ and multiple residential investment properties.
The court heard Lynn applied to three different institutions for finance for the purchase of Glenlion and that he received over €11 million in total for that property.
The financial institutions involved were Bank of Ireland, National Irish Bank, Irish Life and Permanent, Ulster Bank, ACC Bank, Bank of Scotland Ireland Ltd and Irish Nationwide Building Society.
The now defunct Anglo Irish Bank did not form part of the trial as it had used its own solicitors when issuing mortgages and secured the first legal charge on Mr Lynn’s loans.
The prosecution case was that Mr Lynn, then a practising solicitor, was engaged in “a web of deceit” in relation to mortgage applications he made and that documents provided in these applications were untruthful.
These included statement of affairs documentation which purported to be from his accountancy firm, Kinsella Mitchell Ltd, but which contained a forged signature and stamp, the court heard. Nor did these documents set out a full picture of his financial situation, it was alleged.
The court heard that letters of undertaking provided during the mortgage applications and which were purportedly signed by a solicitor at Mr Lynn’s law firm were in fact forgeries – signed by Mr Lynn’s executive assistant, Liz Doyle. The court heard that the interests of the institutions were not registered.
The witnesses
For several weeks in each trial, the jury was brought through the particulars of each loan application in forensic detail, hearing from dozens of witnesses who worked in each of the financial institutions at the time and going through multiple loan documents repeatedly.
Mr Lynn’s former legal executive Liz Doyle told both trials that she signed Mr Lynn’s signature and forged the signature of a senior solicitor in the firm, Fiona McAleenan, on loan documents under Mr Lynn’s instructions. She said she did not discuss this with Ms McAleenan.
Ms Doyle said she didn’t ask questions because it was a “hectic office” and “there was a fear there” – a phrase she repeated verbatim at the second trial.
“Michael Lynn would have been a nice guy, but there was another side to Michael Lynn that there would have been a fear factor,” she said.
She told the court she believed Lynn was going to register the various properties he had secured loans on.
It was the prosecution case that Liz Doyle was Michael Lynn’s “eyes and ears” in the office who carried out much of his paperwork relating to the loans. The defence said Ms Doyle was simply not telling the truth, told completely contradictory evidence and could not be relied on.
Ms McAleenan spent several days in the witness box in both trials – most of them being cross-examined in relation to her role within the firm. She categorically denied she was complicit in Mr Lynn’s deception and said she was “horrified and disgusted” at such a suggestion.
The court heard Ms McAleenan joined Michael Lynn & Co solicitors in 2004 as a litigation solicitor. She said she had very little knowledge of conveyancing and had no involvement of it in the firm.
She denied making herself out to be a partner in the firm, with the court hearing that no partnership agreement was formally reached between herself and Mr Lynn, although she was listed as a partner in the Law Directory and a memo was sent around the practice saying she had been made partner.
Aside from the forged signatures, Ms McAleenan recognised her real signature on a number of documents, but said she did not recall signing them. She said she would sometimes sign documents as a practising solicitor in the firm, but that Ms Doyle would bring them into her office for her to sign before taking them away again.
The court heard that Lynn was struck off the roll of solicitors in May 2008 following an investigation by the Law Society.
No complaint was made against Ms McAleenan following this investigation, the court was told, although a High Court judge found she was “careless” to have held herself out as partner in some of the documentation.
Ms McAleenan told the court she had expected to become partner and that discussions were “quite advanced”.
Lynn on the stand
It was only in the final two weeks of the first trial that Lynn’s defence became clear. During his lengthy direct evidence, he outlined what he claimed were “secret deals” he had with the bank, telling the court that he had an understanding with each bank that he could use the monies from the loans for his overseas property developments.
He said the banks were aware he had mortgages out on multiple properties and this was “custom and practice” in Celtic Tiger Ireland when the property market was moving quickly.
Under questioning from the prosecution, Lynn named bank officials from each bank he said he met with – or his property company employees met with – to make these secret deals.
They were allegations that Judge Martin Nolan later said “stunned” the court.
Rebuttal witnesses – some of the bankers Lynn had named – were called by the prosecution at the end of the first trial and they again gave evidence this year. They all denied having any knowledge of Lynn’s claims about the purpose of is borrowings.
Lynn expanded his defence in his second trial, alleging that he met Michael Fingleton in a Dublin hotel in 2006 and alleging that they signed a “memo of agreement” outlining how Mr Fingleton would receive a stake in Lynn’s Portugese property development project in return for the use of Irish Nationwide funds.
The court heard that Mr Fingleton is unwell and not in a position to give evidence.
In the first trial, Lynn gave lengthy evidence of his arrest in Recife, Brazil in 2013 and his detention in a prison that was essentially run by inmates, with violence commonplace. It was like “Game of Thrones”, he told the court.
Mr Lynn told the court he wanted to come home and answer the charges against him but that there was an issue with transcribing documents. He told the court he couldn’t resolve diplomatic issues when he was “under gunpoint in a hellhole prison in Brazil”.
“I’ve waited a long time to tell this story,” he said.
The prosecution case in the first trial was that Mr Lynn “fled” to Brazil, that he fought the extradition process “tooth and nail” and that he could have come home at any point to answer the case against him. They said he avoided meeting gardaí and fled to Brazil in 2011 without their knowledge, even as they prepared to travel to Portugal to meet him.
Mr Lynn’s wife Bríd Murphy also took the stand at the first trial and described how she didn’t know if her husband was “dead or alive” for five days following his arrest in Recife in 2013, and how they conceived their two youngest children during prison conjugal visits.
The couple, who have four children, are now living on supplementary welfare allowance and financial support from their families, the court heard. Ms Murphy attended the second trial for the final stages to support her husband, but did not give evidence again.
Closing Speeches
In his closing speech last week, Karl Finnegan SC, prosecuting, told the jury Lynn was a greedy risk-taker who lived for the next big deal and pulled the wool over the banks’ eyes. “He should not be allowed to pull the wool over your eyes,” counsel said.
“It’s clear he lived for the next big deal,” Mr Finnegan said. “He is still gambling but the gamble has changed. The gamble is you might accept his version of events,” he added.
He said he believed what happened with Mr Lynn was “very simple and straight-forward”. “He started off in (his solicitor’s) practice, he does well. Goes into property development, does well. He builds up a relationship with the banks, is a good borrower, he pays back his loans. He’s a perfect client. He’s a very, very capable and clever man.”
But Mr Lynn got “greedy” and abused the position he had put himself in, Mr Finnegan said.
Outlining the legal definition of theft, Mr Finnegan said it doesn’t have to be permanent and can be temporary.
“I have no doubt Mr Lynn wasn’t planning on taking €27 million and sailing into the sunset with it and disappearing. He probably was going to pay it back, but he got caught out.”
Mr Finnegan said “millions were to be made abroad” and Mr Lynn was hoping to flip properties overseas and have so much money that he would be able to repay the banks.
“It doesn’t matter, it’s still theft,” Mr Finnegan said.
Mr Finnegan said it was “implausible” that these seven financial institutions across the length and breadth of the country were “in cahoots” with Mr Lynn in terms of his borrowings and were facilitating Mr Lynn in a “unique” way.
He said it was completely unclear what benefits the banks were getting from such an arrangement.
He noted the witnesses from the various banks who gave evidence and denied such an arrangement existed, including one who termed it a “fairytale”.
“This case is about credibility,” Mr Finnegan said. “You have to decide where the credibility lies.”
Mr Finnegan urged the jury to use its common sense and experience. “If you do that, I trust the correct decision is reached,” he said.
In his closing speech, defence counsel Paul Comiskey O’Keeffe BL said the jury verdict would affect the balance of Mr Lynn’s life. “That underlines the seriousness and solemnity of the decision you have to make,” he said.
He said Lynn’s defence was that in respect of one financial institution – Irish Nationwide – there was a an alleged ‘profit share agreement’ with Mr Fingleton, while the other banks were aware of the purpose of Lynn’s borrowings.
“If you accept the banks were aware, then there’s no theft,” Mr Comiskey O’Keeffe said. “Theft requires deception.”
Mr Comiskey O’Keeffe referred to internal emails from Bank of Ireland that the defence received in advance of the second trial which he claimed showed the bank was aware of Mr Lynn’s lending practices.
Defence counsel said the prosecution had discounted the issue of insurance as being irrelevant in relation to the banks, but he noted it only emerged in the second trial that Bank of Ireland received an insurance payout.
“It’s relevant in how you interpret the evidence of the banks,” he said, noting this bank also had internal emails indicating they were aware of Mr Lynn having “undertaking-only mortgages”.
However, a member of the Law Society’s conveyancing committee gave evidence during the trial that she “never” came across the concept of a “solicitor’s undertaking-only” mortgage, where the bank would have “recourse” to a solicitor’s professional indemnity insurance should things go awry.
Noel McCole, a retired business banking manager for National Irish Bank, told the trial that he “never heard of an undertaking-only mortgage in 43 years in the bank”.
Mr Comiskey O’Keeffe told the jury: “What’s bizarre about these seven distinct banks is that not one of them ever sent a letter of demand seeking compliance with an undertaking.”
“(Mr Lynn) has never registered a mortgage in favour of any bank. This was the business model, the custom and practice that developed. You can’t account for this unique similarity between these seven financial institutions without seeing Mr Lynn as a common thread between them all.”
In his charge to the jury, Judge Nolan said that if the jury believed that Mr Lynn had permission from the banks for the use of the monies, then it must acquit him.
Judge Nolan noted this explanation was consistent with innocence. “There’s no deception if each bank knew what he was going to do with the monies. If you find that explanation reasonably believable, Mr Lynn is entitled to an acquittal.”
He said if the jury believed the State’s case that Mr Lynn stole the €27 million by deceiving the lenders, then it must be satisfied of this beyond reasonable doubt before it could consider convicting him.