Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 24 November 2016
Public Accounts Committee
Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle (Resumed)
9:00 am
Mr. Brendan McDonagh:
We have claimed €2.8 million from Cerberus. Once the portfolio transferred to it, the money went into its bank account rather than ours. There is a provision to deal with it in the loan sale agreement. It is called a wrong pocket clause. If money goes into a wrong pocket, it is supposed to come back. Cerberus indicated to us that it had a counterclaim against us for €20 million because it claimed we had sold it things which did not exist. That was part of its post-acquisitions due diligence process. It now claims that it is counterclaiming €2.5 million against us and that it will give us the difference of €300,000. We have not accepted this. In fact, we have not spent a long time looking at it other than the fact that it has made this offer because we have been dealing with questions from the committee and preparing for them. Once we get a chance, we will sit down and figure out what is involved. It will always be a process of negotiation between the two sides, between claims and counterclaims, but that is not unusual in a transaction of this size. While it is important, it is not the biggest issue.
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