IN A BID to save his Dublin home and that of his wife, Sonia, veteran gangland criminal Martin ‘The Viper’ Foley has made a new undisclosed offer to the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB).

In written evidence filed in the High Court today he said he had secured “from a private individual known to me” approximately €200,000.

Foley said he had raised the money by way of bank drafts on the basis he repaid his new benefactor “on terms over time.”

His newly retained barrister, Keith Farry, who appeared with Mulholland Law Solicitors, filed the offer in court today in an affidavit which, Foley said, he hoped would help resolve his problems with CAB.

“I made a proposal for the resolution of these proceedings but I am advised that I cannot disclose the terms (of the offer) which was made on a without prejudice basis,” he said.

He stated only that the offer had been declined today by CAB for whom barrister Shaula Connaughton Deeny led day-long negotiations resulting in a proposed hearing before Judge Michael Quinn having been adjourned until tomorrow week, Thursday 1 October.

Foley has sought a stay on possession of his home pending an appeal to the High Court.

“I remain willing to engage with (CAB) and to pay to it a substantial sum together with further payments by instalments in return for being permitted to remain in my home,” Foley stated.

CAB has an existing court authority to execute a possession order on his house at Cashel Avenue, Kimmage, Dublin, on which he has been granted a continuing stay until 1 October.

CAB had seized his home because he had failed to pay an outstanding tax bill assessed at more than €916,000 in unpaid taxes up to 2000.

Foley stated today that CAB would suffer no material prejudice as its judgment mortgage remained registered against his home, interest continued to accrue, and the property was not diminishing in value.

He alleged that if time was not extended to allow him to fight CAB’s claim he and his wife, Sonia, together with their 11-year-old daughter would lose their home which he had inherited from his mother and in which he had lived all of his 75 years.

He said he lived on a State pension and his wife was in receipt of a social welfare payment. Neither of them had the means to rent or purchase alternative accommodation in Dublin and the consequences of execution of CAB’s proposed sale of his home would be irreversible.