By: Michael O’Farrell
Investigations Editor
THE Government kept its extradition negotiations with Brazil entirely secret to avoid tipping off fugitive solicitor Michael Lynn that he faced being arrested and sent back to Ireland, the MoS can reveal.
A Cabinet decision to enter into the ground-breaking talks was made more than nine months ago and was immediately followed by formal correspondence with the Brazilian authorities by Frank Sheridan, Irish ambassador to Brazil.
But despite the significance of such a deal – with a country until now notorious as a safe haven for fugitives – there was a deliberate decision not to publicise the move in any way.
‘It wasn’t made public,’ a spokesman for Justice Minister Alan Shatter said, although he declined to comment any further.
However, it is known from his statements prior to becoming minister in 2011 that Mr Shatter felt particularly aggrieved at the manner in which Lynn had been evading justice for so long.
‘His appalling and indefensible conduct created substantial difficulties for many individuals and undermined public confidence in the legal profession,’ he said at that time.
The first item agreed during negotiations was that both countries would allow reciprocal extraditions even before a formal agreement is concluded. Such cooperation is permitted under a little-used section of the 1965 Extradition Act.
The decision to keep negotiations under wraps meant that Lynn had no idea he was in any danger of being extradited from the new sun-kissed life he had built in Brazil and was never in a position to move elsewhere or go into hiding to avoid arrest. The matter was treated with such secrecy that even the senior Fraud Squad gardaí who spent years investigating Lynn were unaware he had been detained until they heard it on the news.
Complete secrecy was maintained even throughout the past month when the Irish Government’s request for extradition was considered by Brazil’s supreme court, beginning on July 30.
By August 2 the Irish Government had formally joined the case. It supplied documentation relating to Lynn’s case and the charges he is facing to the Brazil court.
On August 20, supreme court minister Marco Aurélio formally ordered that Lynn be detained.
Two days later, on August 22, an Interpol red notice stating that Lynn was wanted for alleged crimes in Ireland was provided to the authorities in Brazil, and the Brazilian justice and foreign affairs ministers were notified.
With all formalities in place, undercover detectives from Brazil’s police shadowed Lynn for a week as he went about his business in the beach town of Jaboatão dos Guararapes in the north eastern state of Pernambuco.
He is now being detained in the top-security Cotel prison, pending extradition proceedings. These could take anything from a month to a year depending on how vigorously they are contested. That court battle is likely to be particularly difficult because Brazil is notoriously reluctant to extradite the parents of children born there, and Lynn’s current residency visa is based on his son’s right to remain in the country.
Lynn first travelled to Brazil in January 2007 several months before his complex web of irregular financial affairs began to unravel into what would become an extraordinary €80m scandal.
Documentation obtained by the MoS confirms that Lynn appeared to be laying the foundations for a possible life on the run in Brazil from that point onwards, even though he did not move there permanently until he was faced with the threat of arrest in Europe.
