A solicitor working in Gerald Kean’s office when it was visited by the Criminal Assets Bureau told a High Court jury she was “horrified” by a newspaper story on the matter.
Sharyn Coghlan, a conveyancing solicitor in Mr Kean’s practice for 14 years, said when she read the Irish Daily Star article it looked like Mr Kean was “caught up in criminal gangs”.
She disagreed with the newspaper’s lawyer Rossa Fanning that, when the story was taken as a whole, a reasonable reader would not get that impression.
Ms Coghlan said she was horrified by the article which she believed made Mr Kean “look like a suspect in something which he was not involved in”. She was giving evidence in the action by Mr Kean alleging defamation in the March 11, 2016 article headlined “Kean caught up in CAB probe”.
Mr Kean claims it wrongly meant he was linked to gangland crime and has damaged him personally and in his practice as a solicitor. Independent Star Ltd denies defamation and has pleaded fair and reasonable publication in the public interest on a matter of public benefit.
The jury has heard two CAB officers went to Mr Kean’s office at Upper Pembroke Street in Dublin on March 10, 2016 with a District Court search warrant. They were seeking documents concerning the purchase of a house at Kildare Road, Crumlin, by a Dublin man, Sean McGovern, as they suspected that property was bought with the proceeds of crime.
Mr McGovern was wounded in the Regency Hotel shooting in February 2016 when gangster David Byrne was shot dead.
Earlier, under continuing cross-examination by Eoin McCullough, for the newspaper, Mr Kean agreed references in the article to CAB “calling” to the office as part of its probe into the Kinahan drugs cartel and seeking a file relating to the McGovern house purchase were correct. The case continues.
