FORMER CORK football captain and manager Larry Tompkins was fined yesterday after undeclared alcohol was seized at his pub in Cork city last year.
The alcohol had been sourced in the North and was found at Larry Tompkins’s licensed premises on Lavitt’s Quay in Cork by a Customs officer on May 28th, 2009.
Cork-based Customs and Excise officer Tom Farrell seized a quantity of bottled spirits with the UK tax label scratched off at the city centre bar following an inspection of the premises. Giving evidence at Cork District Court yesterday, Mr Farrell told the court that Tompkins said he thought the alcohol was “legitimate”. He cautioned Tompkins and his wife Orla Tompkins as the directors of JBW Agencies, which operates the bar.
Tompkins produced a receipt for the alcohol, for the amount of £4,327.87, that showed it had been purchased from North West Distributors, a supplier based in the North.
Tompkins told the Customs officer he had bought the alcohol for private use. “He said it was used for parties at home and for optics in the bar,” Mr Farrell said.
Tompkins told the official that he had scratched away the labels because he did not want his own supplier to know about the alcohol he had purchased in the North.
Tony O’Brien, solicitor for Tompkins, said his client had co-operated fully with the inspection and had volunteered additional information.
Judge Leo Malone imposed a fine of €2,500 and gave him two months to pay. Tompkins, was not in court, but Orla Tompkins was.