of €20,000 with an independent surety of €50,000. On 17 October 2008, in an agreed legal settlement, Murphy and his brothers paid over £1 million in assets and cash to the authorities in Britain and the Republic in settlement of a global crime and fraud investigation relating to proceeds of crime associated with smuggling and money laundering. After an investigation involving the Irish Criminal Assets Bureau and the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency, more than 625,000 euros (£487, 000) in cash and cheques was confiscated by the Republic's courts, while nine properties in northwest England worth £445,000 were confiscated by British courts. Murphy was still fighting a claim in the Republic's courts for tax evasion, relating to non-completion of tax returns for eight years from 1996. On 26 April 2010, he was further remanded on bail. In 2011, there were claims that Murphy had become disillusioned with the Northern Ireland peace process and that he had fallen out with Sinn Féin. However, there is no evidence to support he is sympathetic to any dissident republican groups. In March 2013, the Garda and the PSNI, along with members of the Irish Customs Authority and HMRC, raided Murphy's farm on the Louth-Armagh border. The Sunday World reported that two hours prior to the raid, at approximately 4am, fire was seen coming from Murphy's yard. There were serious concerns within the Garda and PSNI that a mole may have tipped off Murphy about the raid hours prior to it, as "Laptops, computer disks and a large amount of documentation had been destroyed in the fires." As a result, an internal Garda investigation took place. Tax evasion conviction On 17 December 2015, Murphy was found guilty on nine charges of tax evasion by a three-judge, non-jury Special Criminal Court trial sitting in Dublin, lasting nine weeks. He was tried under anti-terrorist legislation due to the belief by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) that there would not be a fair trial because of the potential of the intimidation of prosecution witnesses and jurors, and the security surrounding the trial (in 1999, a man who testified against Murphy in court was bludgeoned to death after a trial). Murphy was found guilty on all charges of failing to furnish tax returns on his income as a "cattle farmer" between 1996 and 2004. He was prosecuted following a 14-year-long CAB investigation, which during a raid of his