A financial consultant who denies defrauding a former bookmaker of £124,000 said he was shocked and knew he was in trouble after he was confronted by a gunman in daylight but felt he had no reason to report the matter to the gardai.
Mr James Alan Conlan (51), of Ardnataggle, O'Brien's Bridge, Killaloe, Co Clare, told Judge Raymond Groarke and the jury at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court that former Galway bookmaker Mrs Fiona Connelly told him there was a £5,000 contract out for him to be shot.
He agreed with Mr Michael McMahon SC, prosecuting, that he did not tell detectives about this "contract" or the gunman, or about another incident involving three men at his flat who questioned him in 1995 concerning the alleged fraud.
"I figured I was a mature man and could deal with these things myself and therefore not waste Garda time," he said.
Mr Conlan, on the fourth day of his trial, claimed that all these incidents and a series of telephone threats to him and his father happened after Mrs Connelly brought a man using the name "Vincent Whelan" to his office. This man was "very threatening" at the meeting.
He said Mrs Connelly called him to her home some time after that to tell him she had paid out £30,000 to "Vincent Whelan", of which £25,000 was to pay legal costs in recovering her money and £5,000 was to have him shot.
Replying to Mr McMahon, the accused agreed that "in hindsight" he should have reported the incidents and threats to the gardai at the time, or at least when he was being questioned by Det Sgt Colm Featherstone and Det Garda Liam O'Connor in the office of the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation.
Mr Conlan denied these incidents were figments of his imagination.
Mr Conlan is on trial on five charges involving £124,000, the property of Mrs Connelly, Caritas House, Ballybane Road, Galway.
He has pleaded not guilty to three charges of fraudulent conversion of sums of £66,212, £24,000 and £33,789 on dates from September 20th, 1991 to December 9th, 1992.
He has also pleaded not guilty to one charge of obtaining £24,000 from Mrs Connelly by false pretences and to larceny of £24,000 on December 4th, 1992.
Mr Conlan told Mr McMahon that Mrs Connelly gave him £35,000 in September 1991 to put into a Norwich Union bond and a further £100,000 to go into his own business on the basis that a similar amount would be invested for her in the Isle of Man as a "contra" arrangement.
The accused said Mrs Connelly wanted "anonymity" concerning the £100,000. He told her it would go into his business account and "at some time" he would arrange £100,000 to be lodged for her in the Isle of Man.
He said he had an Irish client with money in the Isle of Man at the time who had indicated he wanted to transfer it back to Ireland and it was intended to use his funds as a means of setting up Mrs Connelly's "contra" arrangement and hers to recompense. But the man in question changed his mind.
Mr Conlan rejected Mr McMahon's repeated suggestion that Mrs Connelly believed at all times her money had been invested from the start in the Isle of Man in a company called Hansard International. He said the Hansard option was only one of several and was not decided on until April 1992.
The accused agreed he did not tell Mrs Connelly he was going to put her £100,000 into his Ryehill Lodge country house hotel project but claimed that was "irrelevant". She "knew" the money was going into his business account until such time as the "contra" arrangement was put in place.
Mr Conlan said he had not made up his mind, when she gave him the money, to put it into his hotel but agreed he had cleared the total amount out of his account within a week of getting it.
Mr McMahon suggested that Mrs Connelly still believed, in April 1992, that the accused had her £100,000 and again in August 1992 when he sent her a cheque for £7,120 with a letter claiming it was interest on "a holding deposit account".
Asked by prosecuting counsel to explain his reply to gardai that "she thought her money was invested in Hansard", the accused replied that the detectives should have written down it was "being" invested in Hansard. He was waiting for the opportune time to do that.
Regarding his reply that she thought the £7,120 interest was from Hansard, he said it should have been that it was interest from the "Hansard arrangement".
Mr Conlan denied Mr McMahon's suggestion that he had "welshed" on an agreement noted in a letter from his solicitor to Mrs Connelly's solicitor to convey the Ryehill Lodge property to her as security on her money.
He agreed it had not happened yet and she had initiated more High Court proceedings against him.
The accused's father, Mr Tom Conlan, told Mr Erwan Mill-Arden SC, defending, he received two telephone threats to his wellbeing but agreed he had not gone to the gardai about them.
The hearing continues.