Three men have been cleared at Belfast Crown Court of charges relating to misconduct in public office.
Loyalist activist Jamie Bryson, 35, from Rosepark in Donaghadee, and co-accused Thomas O’Hara, 41, from Lisnahunshin Road in Cullybackey, were found not guilty of conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office, relating to a Stormont committee hearing that examined the sale of the National Asset Management Agency’s (NAMA) Northern Ireland assets in 2015.
Former Sinn Féin MLA Daithí McKay, 43, from Loughan Road in Dunnamanagh – who was chair of the finance committee at the time, was found not guilty of misconduct in public office.
The long-running NAMA trial had related to Mr Bryson’s 2015 appearance before the Stormont committee, chaired by Mr McKay, which was investigating the sale of the NAMA’s Northern Ireland assets to a US investment fund.
The criminal probe was launched after the publication of leaked Twitter messages between Mr Bryson, Mr McKay and the account of Mr O’Hara, who at the time was a Sinn Féin activist in north Antrim.
Mr McKay quit as an MLA within hours of the Twitter messages being published in August 2016.
The Stormont Finance Committee inquiry was set up in 2015 amid political controversy over the multimillion-pound sale of NAMA’s property portfolio north of the border.
NAMA was established in 2009 to handle property loans of Irish banks which were facing collapse during the financial crisis.
It bought loans which had a book value of about €70 billion for €30 billion and the banks required capital from the State to cover the shortfall left on their balance sheets.
It sold its 800 Northern Ireland-linked properties to investment fund Cerberus for £1.2 billion.
Giving evidence to the committee in 2015, Mr Bryson used Assembly privilege to name former DUP leader Peter Robinson as a beneficiary of the sale.
The then-first minister of Northern Ireland strongly rejected any suggestion he benefited from the deal. All other parties involved in the transaction also denied wrongdoing.
Delivering his judgment in the non-jury trial, Judge Gordon Kerr KC cleared all three of the charges they faced.
