A protected witness, John Dunne, told the Veronica Guerin murder trial at the Special Criminal Court yesterday he was paid £1,000 a time by a man called John for shipments he arranged from Holland to Cork.
The prosecution has claimed the shipments contained hundreds of kilos of cannabis resin that Mr John Gilligan illegally imported.
Dunne is the first protected witness to give evidence in the Gilligan trial and is serving a three-year sentence for illegally importing cannabis resin.
He told the court that in 1994 he was the operations manager at Seabridge, an international freight company at Little Island in Cork. Early in 1994 he met a man at the Silver Granite pub in Palmerstown who told him his name was John.
He later got a phone call from the same man, who arranged to meet him in Cork. He met the man outside the Seabridge depot, and they had a 20-minute conversation.
Dunne said he gave the man the names of three agents used by Seabridge in Holland, and the man told him he would be paid £1,000 a shipment. He later got a phone call from John telling him three cartons were being moved from Holland.
Dunne said that he was contacted again and asked to drive another shipment to the Ambassador Hotel in Co Kildare and there he met two men and gave them the consignment. He went into the hotel and John arrived and paid him £1,000. Dunne told Mr Eamonn Leahy SC, prosecuting, that he arranged shipments from early 1994 until October 1996. He said he met the man called John three or four times in 1994 and then did not see him until the summer of 1995.
He said he then met the man outside the Silver Granite pub and was paid by him for shipments that had come in while he was on holiday. Dunne described the man as "small, a low size, stocky man with black hair" and aged around 40 or 45.
It was the 11th day of the trial of Mr John Gilligan (48), who has pleaded not guilty to the murder of the Sunday Independent crime reporter, Veronica Guerin (37), at Naas Road, Clondalkin, Dublin, on June 26th, 1996.
Gilligan also denies 15 other counts alleging the importation of cannabis and firearms and ammunition offences. Earlier Det Insp John O'Mahony said that Charles Bowden, who is currently serving a sentence for drugs and firearms offences and will be called as a State witness in the trial of Mr Gilligan, agreed on March 18th, 1997, to give evidence.
Det Insp O'Mahony said that Bowden had placed his trust in him and they had built up a rapport. He denied that gardai had pressurised Bowden.
The trial continues today.