TWO men including a convicted sectarian killer have been jailed for their roles in a massive fuel laundering operation.
Robert James Brooke Albert Clarke (65) and 37-year-old Mark John Pollock were described as "prime movers" in the criminal enterprise in which red diesel was laundered and passed off as road diesel to unsuspecting motorists.
Revenue and Customs calculated that more than £2.6m in duty and taxes had been evaded.
Clarke - who at the time was the owner of Clarke's Fuels and has been convicted of two loyalist killings in the 1970s - and Pollock, who was his employee, both admitted a charge of conspiring to fraudulently evade excise duty payable on hydrocarbon oils over a period spanning from January 2010 to June 2011.
Pollock also admitted possessing criminal property, namely £94,000 in cash, which was found during a search of his home. Also present during the search were several luxury vehicles as well as a speedboat.
The father-of-two from Belfast Road, Nutts Corner, Co Antrim was jailed for 16 months while Clarke, from Dundrod Road, Crumlin, was sentenced to a year in prison. Both will also serve the same period on license on their release.
Several co-defendants have already been handed suspended prison sentences for lesser roles.
Judge Geoffrey Miller was told on Monday that the laundering was operated through Clarke's Fuels - a business owned by Clarke and situated in Crumlin with an office on Belfast's Shankill Road.
A prosecution lawyer said Clarke's bought their fuel from a supplier and over the 18-month period in question received around 13.6 million litres of red diesel.
However, an investigation of monthly returns showed customers had not received any red diesel or considerably less than the forms stated.
The court was told that fuel was laundered at three different plants - one in Lisburn and two in Crumlin - and was then supplied to several filling stations, as well as being sold an an "illicit filling station set up on an area of waste ground in west Belfast".
Defence barrister Greg Berry said whilst his client's name was "above the door", at the time he was "focusing on other things" - namely facing trial for a paramilitary murder in 1973.
He was jailed in 2011 for the sectarian killing of 53-year-old Alfredo Fusco in his north Belfast cafe but released early under the Good Friday Agreement.
Clarke was also convicted in 1976 of the sectarian drive-by shooting of 58-year-old north Belfast woman Margaret O'Neill the previous year.
Judge Miller said it was his view that when Clarke was sent to prison in 2011, Pollock - as a close and trusted friend - "took over the day to day management of this illegal operation".
HMRC said last night that officers carried out searches of 13 commercial and private premises in Belfast and Co Antrim in June 2011, uncovering a mobile laundering plant, seizing more than £285,000 in cash and 74,000 litres of illicit fuel.
It said Clarke used his business to purchase huge quantities of red diesel, which was then laundered.
"Pollock oversaw the fraud, working with others to launder the fuel, dispose of the waste and hide the fraud behind a false paper trail."
