There was a funny moment, one of many, during almost eight hours of intense questioning at a two-day meeting of Seán Dunne's creditors in Connecticut last week.
Asked by US attorney Tom Curran, for the National Asset Management Agency, whether his wife Gayle Killilea and children had business interests in South Africa, juhuDunne's sarcastic reference to a gold mine appeared lost on Nama's American lawyers who were in no mood for banter. The State loans agency has a €185 million judgment against the Co Carlow developer, among €720 million of debts that forced Dunne into bankruptcy in the US last March.
A €164 million debt to Ulster Bank, which was also represented at the meetings on Thursday and Friday in New Haven, led to Dunne being made bankrupt in Ireland, a ruling he is challenging.
Nama believes Dunne has hidden gold out of the ruins of his €500 million business empire: it claims he fraudulently transferred assets to Killilea, misled the US bankruptcy court in financial declarations and that he is the owner of lucrative property deals in the US and elsewhere, not his wife.
The picture Dunne painted of himself was of a man eager to build again, and living and working through his wife’s companies and Killilea personally, to whom he had gifted €100 million, then a fifth of his fortune, in 2005, in return for “love and affection, and children” – “all things that made me happy”.
Dunne said he was the only employee of Mountbrook USA, of which his wife is the only shareholder.
He was paid $100,000 (€74,000) by the firm, including $60,000 last week and $1,000 a month – which he called a “minimal, nominal, token salary” – by another of her firms called Amrakbo.
He is advising his son on the construction of a house at the K Club golf resort in Co Kildare. (Dunne told Nama's lawyer Tom Curran that he had given his son the site "just for being my son".)
Manhattan apartments
Dunne is advising his son on the development of apartments at 74 Grand Street, a vacant corner site in the trendy Soho fashion district in lower Manhattan through a company called TJD.
“This is no secret – this is not a rabbit that you pulled out from underneath the table,” said Dunne when Curran quizzed him again on the site owned by his wife and son.
Digging to find out if Dunne was calling the shots in the various projects with which he is involved, Curran spent considerable time asking Dunne about his relationship with Dublin accountant James Ryan.
Dunne said Ryan "does my tax returns in Ireland" and looks after the Lagoon Beach Hotel in South Africa, which Dunne transferred to his wife in 2008. Nama's lawyer also asked Dunne about Ross Connolly, his former finance director who sat at the back of the meeting rooms of bankruptcy trustee Richard Coan last week. Asked who paid for Connolly to travel to the meeting, Dunne said he had "not a clue".
Explaining why he didn't retain financial records from transactions and asset transfers, Dunne said Irish property deals involved huge volumes of paperwork – "you would genuinely get a pain in your hand signing documents," he said – and that he delegated this work to accountants and lawyers.
Michael Fingleton Jnr
Dunne was also providing advice to Michael Fingleton jnr, son of the former Irish Nationwide chief executive of the same name, in return for £175,000 (€207,000), which was paid to Mountbrook USA.
He was also asked about his living arrangements. He lived in a house in Greenwich, Connecticut, he said, but this was on the market.
Asked where he intended to live, he said: “Until it is sold, I won’t have to figure that out. Somewhere in America,” adding: “I will definitely let Mr Coan know where.”
Friday’s meeting was adjourned until a later date. It was reported yesterday that the official assignee overseeing Dunne’s Irish bankruptcy was considering travelling to the US to question him about his finances. The assignee would do well to attend his next US creditors’ meeting; last week revealed plenty about Dunne, his work and his money. They also showed a man keen to escape bankruptcy.
Dunne recalled how over a couple of beers and the Irish rugby game against the All Blacks last month, he and Michael Fingleton jnr discussed the Empire State Building in New York being put up for sale.
They pondered when Dunne might be back doing the big deals again. Dunne told the meeting later that he was meeting investment funds and trying to raise finance for property deals. “I am very much constrained by being in bankruptcy,” he said. “I am a bit hamstrung but I will just keep the channels open.”
