A BUSINESSMAN who worked as a sales manager in Kendar, the property business owned by missing solicitor Michael Lynn, has received a payment in recent weeks into his Dublin bank account through a Panamanian company, The Irish Timeshas learned.
Anthony Cantwell, a manager in Mr Lynn's property company, Kendar Holdings, was working in the company's offices in Dublin when the business ceased trading last autumn following the closure of Mr Lynn's law practice and the freezing of his assets and bank accounts by the High Court.
Mr Cantwell received the payment of €3,395 on January 30th through an account in AIB on Grafton Street in Dublin, according to bank records. The payment was made through an entity called Trade Exim Group SA, which shares an address in the Global Plaza Tower in Panama City with a money transfer company called Knight Finance. The company says on its website that its priority is "to maintain confidentiality of our clients. As no one else, we understand the importance of bank secrecy."
Mr Lynn's assets and accounts as well as those of his property development company, Kendar Holdings, were frozen on October 15th last year by the High Court amid concerns about his property dealings and borrowings from Irish financial institutions. The Law Society had found a substantial deficit in the client account of Mr Lynn's practice and a free flow of funds between his practice and property business.
Mr Cantwell received payments totalling more than €6,200 from Kendar in September and early October, according to bank records. He received two payments totalling €8,000 from Kendar Portugal in the month following the freezing of the accounts of the parent company, Kendar Holdings, in Dublin. He received no further payments until the money transfer from the Panamanian company last month.
An Irish mobile phone previously used by Mr Cantwell has been disconnected. He could not be reached for comment. It was reported in December that Mr Cantwell was working on Kendar's operations in eastern Europe. The company was developing property in Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria, and was planning to expand its operations into Poland and Romania when Mr Lynn's assets were frozen.
A large volume of Kendar documents, seen by The Irish Times, reveals further detail on the scale of Mr Lynn's property interests. One document shows that, in early 2007, Mr Lynn was planning to buy properties in Croatia, Brazil, Canada and the Dominican Republic. It is not clear if he completed these purchases as he did not list properties in these countries in an affidavit he filed with the High Court on November 19th last year.
In the affidavit, he listed 148 properties in nine countries, including Portugal, Hungary, Slovakia, China and the US. The affidavit is the only detailed document he filed in the various cases against him before he failed to appear for two days of cross-examination in the High Court in December. He has not been seen in Ireland since.
Accountant Nuno Paulino, who is now in charge of Kendar's property development project in the village of Cabanas on the Algarve, said he saw Mr Lynn in Portugal last month.
According to the Kendar document, Mr Lynn was due to pay deposits on two properties in the Black Mountain Lodge resort in Alberta, Canada, worth €284,895 and €239,444. He was also due to complete the purchase of six properties worth more than €2 million in Croatia in 2009. A property in the Dominican Republic valued at €856,437 is also listed on the document.
A seaside property and four plots of land in Brazil, with purchase prices of €361,518 and €325,366 respectively, were also listed in the document but no dates of sale completion were included. Kendar said in another document, a draft business plan written in late 2006, that the company may develop a property speculation arm in Brazil because it was a Portuguese-speaking country and the company was already doing business in Portugal. "Initial meetings have already taken place and a follow-up visit is planned for first quatter [ sic]," said the company in the draft plan.
In a proposal written by Kendar seeking bank financing of €28 million for the second phase of its project in Cabanas, the company said Mr Lynn would "like to live in Portugal permanently as he sees Portugal as one of the most important areas for his future business expansion". The proposal estimated Mr Lynn's net worth at €38 million and estimated that Kendar's projects in Portugal, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Poland would have a final sales value of €297.7 million.
The company said the first phase of the Cabanas project had sales of €14.6 million and estimated the second phase would bring in €52 million. Portuguese bank Millennium BCP agreed to provide a loan of €26 million to Kendar last summer.
Another Kendar document shows that the company had received €929,000 from investors in the second phase of the Cabanas project as of December 15th, 2006. A separate document shows that Kendar received €4.1 million from investors for properties in Hungary.
According to the 2006 draft business plan, Kendar said one of its strengths was that it had "a visionary owner [Mr Lynn] who is prepared to take bold decisions and to act on the facts presented to him".
