BT/0817

Hidden wealth of a convicted terrorist
Income was 'restructured' before trial
By Sean O'Driscoll

COLM Murphy, the businessman convicted yesterday of plotting the Omagh bombing, transferred £240,000 to his children's accounts in the weeks after the atrocity, the Belfast Telegraph can reveal. Michael Gallagher, whose 21-year-old son, Adrian, was murdered in the blast, said last night that he would be consulting with lawyers to see if the money can be recovered in a civil action being taken against Murphy by victims of the blast. He described the move as a cynical attempt to evade justice.
Murphy wrote out a cheque for £80,000 to each of his three children and these were then lodged in building society accounts in their names and his wife's, gardai have said. Murphy is also said to have undertaken a major restructuring of his income since the bombing.
Much of Murphy's wealth comes from his highly successful subcontracting business that earned huge sums of money during the 1990s building boom in Dublin. The Telegraph has learnt that Murphy earned tens of thousands of pounds of Irish taxpayers' money doing lucrative building work on government-funded projects in Dublin while known to gardai as a leader of the dissident republican group, Continuity IRA.
It was at a multi-million pound government-funded university project that he acquired a mobile phone from his foreman for use in the Omagh bombing. Murphy later tried to claim legal aid when he was arrested, but his assets are said to include:
>A pub in Dundalk worth £250,000,
>A house in Ravensdale, Co Louth, worth £150,000
>Ten acres of land outside Drogheda, including a plot with six housing sites.
>30 acres of agricultural land outside Dundalk, owned jointly with his sister.
>A building company with a turn over of one million pounds per year.
Garda believe that overall, his annual income was £200,000 a year until his arrest in February 1999.
Officers attached to the Gardai Bureau of Fraud Investigation are still assessing Murphy's income but have discovered that the average balance on his business account in AIB bank in Ashbourne, Co Meath was £300,000 from February 1998 to October 1999.
They have also followed the money trail in his current account and discovered that it contained £159,000 at the start of February, 2000.
Murphy earned much of his wealth as one of the largest sub-contractors in the Republic and nine months before the Omagh bombing, he told Sinn Fein newspaper, An Phoblacht, that he regularly had up to 60 men working at any one time.
According to a source in the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation, Murphy's tax liability for 1998-99 was £108,503.
However, Murphy has done his best to hide the true extent of his wealth from the general public since the bombing.
The Telegraph can today reveal that Murphy earned tens of thousands of pounds as one of the chief sub-contractors on the Irish government-sponsored £llm extension to Dublin City University, during which he plotted the Omagh bombing.
Murphy took the mobile phone from a site foreman for use in the Omagh bombing, along with his own mobile phone.
In May, 1998, three months before the Omagh bombing, he was named as the Continuity IRA's leader in a Sunday newspaper article in the Republic. His dissident activity continued, as did his lucrative building trade until he was charged with the Omagh bombing in February 1999.