A challenge by Gayle Dunne, wife of bankrupt developer Seán Dunne, to a freezing order on her assets will be heard by the High Court next month.
Mrs Dunne wants the court to lift an interim order preventing her reducing her assets below €50 million.
The order was obtained by Chris Lehane, the official administering her husband's bankruptcy, arising from his view efforts have been made to put some of Mr Dunne's assets beyond the reach of creditors.
Those assets include Walford, a house on Dublin’s Shrewsbury Road which Mr Dunne bought for €58 million in 2005 – making it the country’s most expensive home at the time – and gifted to his wife.
The house was sold last year for €14.2 million to a trust which is in turn held in another trust whose settlor is financier Dermot Desmond.
House title
Mr Desmond says the purchaser, Celtic Trustees Ltd, has good title to the property and he has brought a separate Commercial Court challenge to a legal claim a lis pendens – which Mr Lehane has registered on the property.
On Tuesday, Ms Justice Caroline Costello said the hearing of Mrs Dunne’s challenge to the freezing order on her assets can go ahead next month and may take up to three days to hear.
The judge was told a replying affidavit had been provided by Mrs Dunne but had not been formally filed with the court office yet.
Alan Doherty, for Mrs Dunne, said that when that was filed it would not have the status of being opened before the court and there may be an application in relation to it later because it contained “sensitive material”.
Ms Justice Costello said that was the situation until the affidavit is opened (before the court) but it should be filed anyway. She fixed the hearing for April 4th.
