Crimlin Road jail escaper Mr Anthony Sloan has taken a High Court challenge to a demand for alleged unpaid taxes and penalties by the Criminal Assets Bureau totalling almost £135,000. He is also challenging claims by CAB that he was engaged in criminal activity.
Mr Sloan, with an address in Dundalk, Co Louth, claimed in an affidavit he had been unemployed and receiving social welfare payments during the period covering the three-year tax assessment issued to him by CAB.
Det Chief Supt Felix McKenna, the head of CAB, challenged Mr Sloan's claims in an affidavit. He said Mr Sloan had given little or no information with regard to his income. Chief Supt McKenna said he believed Mr Sloan to be engaged in ongoing criminal activity and to have benefited materially from such activity.
A detective inspector said that he had "paid particular attention" to Mr Sloan between 1992 and 1995 as Mr Sloan was a "very important member of the Provisional IRA" at the time. He believed Mr Sloan was operating a hackney service in Dundalk.
Mr Sloan has applied to the President of the High Court, Mr Justice Finnegan, for a declaration that CAB has acted unlawfully and abused its powers in the tax assessment it raised in refusing to accept his appeal and in taking enforcement action on foot of those assessments. He is also seeking an order quashing the assessments.
Mr Sloan is being asked to pay a tax bill of £51,282 covering a three-year period between 1993-1996 together with interest of £83,429, making a total of £134,712.
Mr Sloan, in his affidavit, said he had grown up in Belfast, was convicted in 1981 of unlawful possession of firearms and ammunition and of unlawful imprisonment and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
However, some days before that conviction he and others escaped from Crumlin Road jail and he came to the Republic. A year later he was arrested and convicted of the unlawful escape from Crumlin Road jail and served a sentence in Portlaoise jail. He supported the peace process in the North and in December 2000 got a royal pardon.
In November 1996, he and another man started a taxi business. Mr Sloan said he had filed tax returns since 1996 and in May 2000 underwent a tax audit that disclosed no serious problems. At present he had one car and two buses and his major client was the North East Area Health Board.
In November 2001 he was told CAB served attachment notices on the health board, AIB, TSB and Tesco. The health board money was the mainstay of his business and depriving him of this would force him out of business.
Chief Supt McKenna, in his affidavit, said the court should refuse Mr Sloan's application on the basis that it was part of a pattern of activity by which he had sought to frustrate and delay collection of taxes from him. He and his officers in CAB believed Mr Sloan was engaged in on-going criminal activity and benefited from such activity.
The hearing continues today.