June 6, 2003 From the FOIF Archives: Rupert Owes IRS $700K
by Ed Moloney, Sunday Tribune, April 22, 2001

The U.S.-based double agent who is reportedly the key witness against the dissident Republican leader, Michael McKevitt, owes the Federal tax authorities at least $700,000 in relation to unpaid tax bills which date back before he apparently agreed to infiltrate anti-agreement Republican groups in America and Ireland.

David Rupert, a former trucking business owner from Illinois, is registered with the Recorder of Deeds in Cook County, Chicago as owing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) $325,000 from as far back as February 1994. With interest and penalty payments averaging twelve per cent per annum, in line with IRS regulations, this means that his total debt to the federal authorities has grown to just under $700,000. Reports from the US say that it may not have been until 1997 that he agreed to work for the FBI.

The scale of the debt provides a possible explanation for his readiness to inflitrate dissident Republican groups on behalf of the FBI, the Gardai and British security authorities and to testify against McKevitt who earlier this month was arrested at his Co Louth home by gardai and charged on two counts of directing terrorism and membership of the Real IRA. The first charge carries a possible life sentence.

Copies of IRS documents lodged in Chicago which were obtained by the Sunday Tribune show that the debt still hangs over Rupert despite his co-operation with the authorities on both sides of the Atlantic. This suggests that if a deal has been done with Rupert to clear his tax debts it will only be honoured when he completes his evidence in court.

The possibility that Rupert was pressurised or induced into agreeing to be a witness may however complicate the prosecution case against McKevitt, a former Quarter-Master General of the Provisional IRA who broke with the Adams leadership in late 1997. When the Northern authorities used a similar tactic against Republicans and Loyalists in the early 1980's in so-called 'supergrass' trials they ran into trouble when evidence emerged that ex-paramilitary witnesses had been similarly persuaded to testify against former colleagues. Defence lawyers would argue that in such circumstances 'supergrass' testimony was unreliable.

Rupert (49) is reported to be in the protective custody of the FBI somewhere in the United States along with his wife, Maureen who appears to be Irish-American. A part German, part Mohawk Indian, according to the reports, he ran up the tax debts seemingly in connection with his business activities.

In February 1994 the IRS issued a lien against his property totalling $94,200 arising from his failure to pay income tax and social security deducted from employees. In June 1995 a second lien for $230,000 was issued mostly because of a similar failure but also in relation to $39,000 in unpaid personal income tax.

Just how Rupert became involved in Irish affairs is not fully known. One account says that he fled the US in 1995 and came to Bundoran, Co Donegal where he bought a public house. This account says he befriended a local supporter of Republican Sinn Féin, then the only dissident Republican group in existence, who was also a publican.

He then apparently returned to the US but settled in Indiana, next door to Illinois where he used a false name. If this was done to evade the IRS' attentions then he may also have made himself liable to criminal charges. Rupert appeared on the Irish-American dissident scene in 1997 when he joined the RSF/Continuity IRA support group, the Irish Freedom Committee but was expelled last year after a row involving sending money to the Real IRA.

After that he apparently made contact with the 32 County Sovereignty group, whose leading member, Bernadette Sands, a sister of the dead IRA hunger striker, Bobby Sands, is married to Michael McKevitt. Reports since Rupert's role became known claim that he attended meetings of senior dissidents including a gathering of the Real IRA's ruling Army Council, something that would be regarded in Republican circles as an astonishing security lapse.

Ironically his role as a double agent seems to have been facilitated by the division and conflict that has riven the dissident Republican scene. Contrary to claims from security sources on both sides of the Border that the Real and Continuity IRA's regularly co-operate with each in paramilitary matters the truth is that the hostility between them, certainly at leadership level, is almost as intense as they share for the Provisional IRA. It appears that Rupert may have manipulated these divisions to the benefit of the FBI and their colleagues in Ireland and Britain.