Loyalist assets handed to SOCA
A former close associate of murdered UDA chief Jim Gray is to relinquish his home and eight bank accounts.
Friday, 27 November 2009
The Serious Organised Crime Agency was granted a recovery order against Thomas Gary Matthews, 48, and his wife Lucinda.
High Court proceedings were launched against the couple, of Dixon Park Road, Bangor, Co Down after the case was referred by police in 2007.
In an application for civil recovery SOCA claimed Matthews derived the majority of his assets through money laundering and false accounting.
It also was alleged that he had been involved in extortion and blackmail.
On Friday the couple agreed to settle SOCA's claim by handing over assets including the residential property in Bangor and the contents of eight bank accounts.
It brings to a close a case which started with an order to freeze more than £300,000 worth of assets.
Matthews was a close friend of Gray, the deposed UDA leader gunned down outside his father's home in Belfast in October 2005.
At the time of his murder Gray was on bail facing money laundering charges and had been thrown out of the UDA months earlier.
He was lifting weights out of Matthews' car when the killers struck.
Despite being present at the scene, Matthews failed to appear to give evidence at the inquest into Gray's death.
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