Well-known Dublin criminal Martin ‘The Viper’ Foley has been ordered to pay over €738,000 in unpaid tax and interest payments.
It’s after the 66-year-old failed to convince the Court of Appeal that the proceedings taken by the Criminal Assets Bureau were unfair.
Martin Foley was an associate of the notorious gangland criminal Martin Cahill, better known as The General, who was shot dead in 1994.
He picked up the first of his 40 criminal convictions when he was 16yo and has survived several attempts on his life down through the years.
In 1984, he was abducted by the Provisional IRA, but escaped following a shootout between Gardaí and his kidnappers.
This case was an appeal against a 2014 High Court judgment which gave CAB permission to collect an unpaid tax and interest bill of €738k.
Foley put forward a number of grounds of appeal, including his claim that the delay in bringing proceedings resulted in his bill being unnecessarily high
On that point, the court ruled that he knew well he had an unpaid bill for taxes and that interest was accruing.
The judges said he had no basis for believing the taxes wouldn’t be pursued and could have stopped the “interest clock” from running.
In dismissing his appeal, Mr. J John Edwards said a citizen’s obligation to pay taxes and to do so in a timely manner is common knowledge.
Reporting by Frank Greaney
