Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly will witness the Dáil Committee on Public Accounts quiz Nama on the controversial €1.6 billion Project Eagle loan sale later this week.
The Dáil committee is due to question the agency on Thursday about the sale of debts due to it from mainly Northern-based borrowers to US investment fund Cerberus in early 2014.
Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly’s finance and personnel committee, which is carrying out its own investigation, are due to attend Thursday’s Leinster House hearings.
An Oireachtas spokeswoman said the Dáil committee has yet to decide if Northern Ireland Assembly members will give an update in public on the progress that they have made with their inquiry. Claims that £7 million (€9.5 million) diverted from Belfast law firm, Tughans, to an Isle of Man bank account was destined for political figures in the North plunged Project Eagle into controversy earlier this year.
Nama maintains that it carried out the Project Eagle auction properly and assured itself that Cerberus had had no dealings with anyone with any conflict of interest before it tabled its winning €1.6 billion bid for the loans.
Auction
Another bidder, Pimco, pulled out of the auction after telling Nama it had promised to pay £5 million to a former member of the agency’s Northern Ireland Advisory Board, Frank Cushnahan.
Mr Cushnahan was connected to Tughans which, along with New York law firm, Brown Rudnick, advised first Pimco and then Cerberus, on their respective bids for Project Eagle.
Meanwhile, Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams has briefed one of Cerberus’s investors, New York state comptroller Tom DiNapoli, on the controversy. Mr Adams raised the issue with officials from Mr DiNapoli’s office during a US visit. The comptroller is the sole trustee of the $184.5 billion New York retirement for public service workers. The fund has invested $50 million with Cerberus.
