Irish financial adviser Ted Cunningham has been found guilty of laundering more than £3m in cash from the £26.5m Northern Bank robbery.

Cunningham, of Farran, County Cork, faces up to 14 years in jail. He will be sentenced next month.

The 60-year-old, who ran money-lending and investment firm Chesterton Finance, was found guilty of 10 charges linked to the dirty money racket by a jury at Cork Circuit Criminal Court.

Cunningham clutched rosary beads and his lips trembled as the jury returned to the courtroom after four hours and 40 minutes and returned majority verdicts on all 10 counts.

His son, Timothy, had pleaded guilty to four charges of money laundering on day 15 of the lengthy trial.

The main charge is that they had in their possession £3,010,380 at Farran between December 20, 2004 and February 16, 2005, knowing or believing it to be the proceeds of a robbery at the Northern Bank Cash Centre in Belfast.

Cunningham's long-term partner, Cathy Armstrong, rubbed his shoulder in support and nodded her head as the guilty verdicts were delivered.

Judge Cornelius Murphy said it was unlikely Mr Cunningham would be freed on bail until sentencing, but rose for 10 minutes before making a decision — allowing the convicted money-launderer more time with his family.

“Given the seriousness of the charges and the way the case has progressed it's very unlikely that he will be released on bail,” he told the court.

The court ruled that Cunningham knew that more than £3m sterling traced to him was from the infamous December 2004 heist.

Of the 155,000 banknotes |recovered from his home, 15,000 were examined, with more than 400 identified by stamps and handwriting as having passed through the Northern Bank cash centre bank.

The jury even watched an interview with Criminal Assets Bureau officers in which he admitted the cash was from the robbery and that he had thought about burning it.

But in court the financier maintained that £2.3m sterling discovered in a locked cupboard in the basement of his home on February 16, 2005 came from the cash sale of a gravel pit in Co Offaly to Bulgarian businessmen.

During the 45-day trial he |insisted he travelled to Bulgaria with business partner Phil Flynn, once one of Ireland's top industrial relations trouble-shooters and then chair of the Bank of Scotland in Ireland.

Gardai said that, under interrogation, the money-lender said he was given £4.9m from an unidentified male in a northern-registered car whom he met on four separate occasions.

But Cunningham said his |detention was worse than being in Guantanamo Bay and alleged he was intimidated into co-operating with gardai after he was arrested on suspicion of IRA membership.

The court also heard claims that Mr Flynn, a trade union leader and former Sinn Fein vice-president, was his alleged boss and consultant Catherine Nelson, the person who allegedly tried to calm him when he panicked over the cash and told him the “boys will sort it out”.

Judge Murphy called the parties back into the courtroom and |remanded Cunningham in custody.

“I will remand him in custody for two reasons,” said the judge, “the seriousness of the charges and the course of the case.”

The formerly well-respected businessman held back tears as he hugged his partner and family members, including an inconsolable Timothy Cunningham jnr.

Both he and his son, who remains on bail, will be sentenced on Friday, April 24.

£2.3m in six holdalls and a shopping bag

For at least four years, Irish detectives tracked a complex trail of dirty money from one of the world’s largest bank robberies to the basement of an unassuming financial adviser’s country home.

There — stuffed in six holdalls and one plastic shopping bag — was £2.3m from the notorious Northern Bank Robbery. And for Timothy ‘Ted’ Cunningham, his apparent double life as an honest investment adviser in Co Cork and money launderer for the IRA was thrust into the spotlight.

In that time the hot money trail shifted from Belfast, across the Republic and even led investigators to look at Bulgaria and the former Soviet state of Kazakhstan.

Financier Cunningham was given almost £5m from the £26.5m Northern Bank robbery in December 2004. Detectives said he either knew it was hot, or suspected it.

Some of the cash recovered when his home was raided two months later was traced directly to the bank’s supposedly impenetrable Belfast vaults.

But it was more than four years before Ted Cunningham and his son Timothy were charged with possessing £3,010,380 stolen from the city cash centre.

Hardened gardai, used to tailing the IRA and fraudsters, were deployed in Operation Phoenix and stunned into silence on February 16 2005 as wads of cash were discovered locked in a cupboard in Cunningham’s basement. The 60-year-old had already disposed of £1.5m “in panic”.

Some of that cash later went up in smoke when a worried associate in Passage West, Co Cork, attempted to stop the trail by burning the new sterling notes, which flew up the chimney before scorched money fell from the sky into neighbours’ gardens.

Tullamore jeweller John Douglas stored £250,000 under his parents’ bed. Cunningham said it was from the sale of a house. Around £175,000 was given to property developer John Sheehan, from Ballincollig, near Cork city, in two plastic bags as security for a loan.

And car salesman Dan Joe Guerin was given £200,000 in repayment for a long-term outstanding loan.

Cunningham warned him: “Dump whatever sterling you still have in your possession. I’m f***ed if you’re caught with that.”

Ted Cunningham maintained in court the £3m came from the cash sale of a gravel pit in Offaly to Bulgarian businessmen.

The robbery that rocked peace process to its core

The £26.5m Northern Bank robbery shocked Belfast and rocked the Northern Ireland peace process to its very foundations.

The timing and scale of the then record-breaking haul, a week before Christmas 2004, virtually floored |efforts to build a fragile political deal, shattering strained trust between |republicans and unionists.

Senior politicians accused the IRA over the heist, saying it must have been authorised at Army Council level.

Then Irish Justice Minister Michael McDowell named senior Sinn Fein figures including Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness as being among the terror group’s ruling generals.

The move prompted party president Gerry Adams to say ministers should direct gardai to arrest him if they had the evidence. And as politicians traded insults a hunt for the cash was launched across Ireland.

The Northern Bank later re-issued new-look banknotes, rendering the stolen cash worthless, and posters went up in bars in the west of the city saying ‘No Northern Bank Notes’.

Despite numerous arrests and raids by both the PSNI and gardai in the Republic, Ted and Timothy Cunningham — who gardai now accept are not members of the IRA — are the only people convicted of anything linked with the infamous heist.

Northern Bank worker Chris Ward — who was wrongly labelled the “inside man” by police — was acquitted last October when the prosecution dramatically dropped its case.

And besides the £3m traced to Ted Cunningham, little more of the cash has been uncovered — although in 2007, £50,000 of unused Northern Bank notes were found in five packages in the toilets of the New Forge police recreational club.