Lowry Fined €15,000

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Criminal Court of Justice, Dublin
By DubhEire - Own work, CC0, Link

Tipperary TD Michael Lowry has been fined €15,000, after being found guilty of filing an incorrect corporation tax return and for a failure to keep proper books of account between 2002 and 2007. A fine of €10,000 was also ordered against his company Garuda.

The sentence was handed down by Judge Martin Nolan this afternoon.

The charges concerned related to a payment of €372,000 from a Finnish company. The payment, the court was told, was due to Garuda in 2002 as commission, but was paid to a third party.

The state had claimed that Mr Lowry and his company tried to keep it off the books until 2006. The jury found that Mr Lowry and Garuda had knowingly delivered an incorrect corporation tax return for the year ending 2006.

However, the jury could not agree on four other counts, after deliberating for just over eight-and-a-half hours.

Mr Lowry had pleaded not guilty on his own account and on behalf of Garuda to all charges. He further pleaded not guilty to knowing or conniving in the alleged offences.

A charge that he had submitted an incorrect personal tax return for 2002 was dropped last week.

The court was also told that the counts on which the jury couldn’t agree will not trouble the court again.