Timeline: Project Eagle

£1.2 billion sale of Nama’s Northern Ireland property portfolio

DUP leader and former Northern Ireland First Minister Peter Robinson: has denied claim that he was earmarked to benefit from the Project Eagle sale. Photograph: Getty Images
DUP leader and former Northern Ireland First Minister Peter Robinson: has denied claim that he was earmarked to benefit from the Project Eagle sale. Photograph: Getty Images

June 2013: Sammy Wilson, then Northern Ireland minister of finance and personnel tells Michael Noonan that parties interested in buying Nama's northern loans have contacted him.

September 2013: Law firm Brown Rudnick contacts Nama saying US fund manager Pimco is interested in buying the assets. November 2013: Wilson's nominee to Nama's northern advisory committee, Frank Cushnahan, resigns, citing personal reasons.

December 2013: Nama puts Project Eagle on the market. March 10th 2014: Pimco tells Nama it has agreed to pay Cushnahan, Brown Rudnick and, Belfast lawyers, Tughans, £15 million sterling in success fees if it wins the deal. It then pulls out of the auction for Project Eagle. Tughans and Brown Rudnick switch to Cerberus.

March 25th 2014: Cerberus chairman and former US vice-president Dan Quayle meets North's then first minister Peter Robinson, then finance minister Simon Hamilton and Ian Coulter, managing partner at Tughans.

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April 2014: Cerberus secures Project Eagle for £1.2 billion.

January 2015: Tughans managing partner Ian Coulter resigns.

July 2nd: Independent TD Mick Wallace tells the Dáil that £7 million diverted from a Tughans company bank account to the Isle of Man was "reportedly earmarked for a Northern Ireland politician or political party".

July 3rd: Tughans names Coulter as the partner who left in a dispute over allegedly diverted fees from Project Eagle. Coulter has denied any financial benefit.

July 7th: Stormont's finance committee and Dáil Committee of Public Accounts (PAC) announce separate inquiries into Project Eagle.

July 9th: Police Service of Northern Ireland and UK National Crime Agency launch a criminal inquiry into Wallace's allegations.

July 10th: Nama tells PAC that Cushnahan and the two law firms were to split Pimco's £15 million payment equally, getting £5 million each.

September 7th: It emerges that the US department of justice has sent a subpoena for information on the Project Eagle deal to Cerberus.

September 16th: Cerberus tells the North's finance and personnel committee in writing that it had no first-hand knowledge of Coulter's actions after Tughans was paid for Project Eagle. It says that it paid Brown Rudnick, which shared its fee with the Belfast firm.

September 23rd: Loyalist blogger and flag protestor, Jamie Bryson, tells the finance and personnel committee that former first minister, Peter Robinson, was one of five people earmarked to benefit from the Project Eagle sale. Robinson denies the claim. Deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness, tells the committee that he was kept in the dark over Project Eagle and was never fully briefed.

Barry O'Halloran

Barry O'Halloran

Barry O’Halloran covers energy, construction, insolvency, and gaming and betting, among other areas