Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This debate was moved from Thursday to Wednesday to ensure the Minister, Deputy Noonan, could be in the Chamber and he is not here. His contribution at the start of the debate was pathetic. The contribution of the Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts was not much better. The notion that the Committee of Public Accounts is an investigative body is rubbish. The Comptroller and Auditor General looked at one dimension of one sale, and the Committee of Public Accounts is looking at it also. It cannot access NAMA's papers. It cannot possibly hold NAMA to account. NAMA representatives went before the Committee of Public Account eight times and said what they liked. It is absolute rubbish.

It is four months since the Taoiseach agreed to establish a commission of investigation into the secret society that is NAMA. Since then, NAMA has sold over €4 billion in par value worth of loans to vulture funds, and almost €3 billion worth of those loans went to its good friend, Cerberus.

I agree that the commission should begin by examining Project Eagle as its first module, but the problems in NAMA are sadly not unique to NAMA’s Northern Ireland loan portfolio. It is imperative that any commission adopts a modular approach, similar to the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, IBRC, investigation.

The allegations made by Enda Farrell, a former NAMA staff member, should be the second module. It seems NAMA may have internally investigated some of the NAMA officials named by Mr. Farrell in his affidavit who may have leaked confidential information or engaged in malpractice. Those internal investigations should be made available to the commission. I have read his affidavit and I can tell the Minister of State that it is worrying.

The third module should examine the establishment of Hibernia REIT. It was set up in 2013, following a three year stint at NAMA by one of its founders, but it seems the company was in planning for a long time before that.

Some businessmen on the east coast of the United States were briefed on Hibernia REIT's arrival as early as 2011. Kevin Nowlan is on the record as stating: "We know enough people in Dublin to be able and go buy properties in Dublin without having to go to auction, of having to go onto the Market."

If one looks at some of the assets it has purchased, the links back to NAMA begin to appear - the Forum Building, the Dublin Observatory Building, the Harcourt Street building, Windmill Lane, New Century House and Central Quay. All those assets were in NAMA and are now in the hands of Hibernia REIT, either through direct purchases or secondary deals.

A fourth module should consist of an examination of any internal NAMA investigations into NAMA officials regarding the leaking of confidential information or alleged malpractice and, if the judge sees fit, to investigate any other allegations of unauthorised leaking.

The commission of investigation should provide its initial report on Project Eagle within six months and the remaining modules within 12 months. Importantly, any report should be made public.

Before referring back to Project Eagle, I would like to put on record that the Comptroller and Auditor General's role in regard to NAMA has been abused by the Government. At one stage, the Taoiseach tried to tell us that the Comptroller and Auditor General had staff within NAMA. That had to be rebuked by the Comptroller and Auditor General who stated: "an impression being given that everything that moves in NAMA is seen by and examined by somebody from my office is absolutely incorrect".

The Minister, Deputy Noonan, recently tried to tell me that the Comptroller and Auditor General would have called for a halt to NAMA's activities had he felt it was warranted. Again, the Comptroller and Auditor General rebuked that stating that he "is prohibited from expressing an opinion on the merits of policy".

As an aside, I want to tell the Minister that Cormac Butler, a financial consultant and a member of the namaleaks.comteam, has pointed out that NAMA may not even hold legal title to the assets transferred from the Irish banks in 2009, given that when a bank is insolvent, the European Central Bank, ECB, automatically acquires control of its assets. If that is the case, it would mean that the ECB, not NAMA, is the owner of the loans. We have been raising some of these issues with the Minister and his Department since last August but to little avail.

Cormac Butler has also been making the point that when Wilbur Ross, President Donald Trump's Secretary of Commerce nominee, purchased Bank of Ireland shares in 2011 and then flipped them in 2014 for a profit of €477 million, he did so with the advantage of having access to the financial position of the bank, which was not in the public domain. That was information that was not available to smaller shareholders. I would like the Minister to confirm or deny that his officials are now aware that the activities of Wilbur Ross and his sale of Bank of Ireland shares is the subject of an investigation in the US. They do an odd one there; they are a little more fond of them than we are here.

To go back to Project Eagle, the sale stinks from start to finish. In late 2016, we travelled to Asia to meet a businessman named Barry Lloyd, who had contacted us through our whistleblowing site, namaleaks.com.

As early as December 2010, Frank Cushnahan had been trying to sell the NAMA Northern Ireland loan portfolio in one lot. He met Barry Lloyd and told him he had been heavily engaged by NAMA and that there were very substantial opportunities for major returns for anyone who could access international funds to acquire blocks of development assets from NAMA. Barry Lloyd continued to meet and engage with Mr. Cushnahan and representatives from Tughans solicitors throughout 2011 with a view to securing Asian investors, but the proposed deal eventually fell through in April 2012. Barry Lloyd signed an affidavit in the past week in Dublin, and has met the National Crime Agency.

In November 2012, Brown Rudnick met Mr. Cushnahan and Ian Coulter at Tughans' office. By February 2013, it was sitting down with the Northern Ireland finance Minister, Sammy Wilson. In April 2013, PIMCO was on the scene and by May 2013 it was meeting Peter Robinson, when it was informed by Brown Rudnick that it was the Northern Irish Executive's preferred purchaser for NAMA's Northern Irish loan portfolio, but there was still no price on it. We are told it did not meet Ronnie Hanna until September 2013. By December 2013, Mr. Hanna was arguing for an exclusive deal with PIMCO. I wonder why.

We then had some role-playing and pretending that it was going to be an open process. Lazard was brought in, supposedly to manage the sale, but it was not even allowed to value the portfolio or control the data room. When PIMCO pulled out, NAMA did not even tell Lazard why. Lazard did not even attend the meeting in late March between Cerberus and NAMA. Why? However, it was paid £4.3 million for a few months' work. This is a lot of money, just for a bit of back covering.

Hogan Lovells was brought in for legal advice, but NAMA did not even ask its advice following PIMCO's admission of a fixer's fee for the boys. NAMA did not even ask its advice when it discovered Cerberus had gone ahead and paid the £15 million fixer's fee anyway. NAMA stated it had a problem with PIMCO paying a fixer's fee, so why did it not have a problem with Cerberus paying one? Was it because the boys took Cushnahan's name off the list? Seriously? Why did NAMA refuse our freedom of information request regarding its correspondence with Hogan Lovells? NAMA agreed to pay Hogan Lovells £290,000 but ended up paying it £1.1 million, for what?

That Frank Cushnahan, Ronnie Hanna and Dave Watters were a cabal making it all happen in the background is now beyond question. Frank Daly told the Committee of Public Accounts last September that NAMA's key decision was to set a minimum price of £1 .3 billion for the portfolio, but it did not do so as PIMCO set the price. Dave Watters did the business plans, Frank Cushnahan pulled the strings and Ronnie Hanna fixed the price in Dublin. The reason NAMA fell foul of the Comptroller and Auditor General was because the task of retrofitting the price led to it breaking its own rules. Of course, when Frank Cushnahan became unbackable NAMA decided to throw him under the bus and distance itself from him as much as possible. Why did it take NAMA until April 2016, two years later, to report him to SIPO? When did it report him under section 19 of the Criminal Justice Act, or did it?

We then began to hear NAMA tell us about how insignificant the Northern Ireland advisory committee, NIAC, was and that Mr. Cushnahan did not really matter. On 18 June 2012, the Minister for Finance said, "I would like to thank Frank Cushnahan and Brian Rowntree for agreeing to continue serving on NAMA's Northern Ireland Advisory Committee. I see this Committee as having a very important role in assisting NAMA to meet its objectives on both sides of the border". Then NAMA told us that Cushnahan had no access to confidential information, so why did it ask him to return or destroy it if there was no value in it? Frank Daly was still trying to distance himself from Cushnahan. When asked about joining the board of the religious charity Ciorani, of which Cushnahan was a long standing member, Mr. Daly stated:

I think it was a pure coincidence. It is a charity operated by the Redemptorists. He was on the board for quite some time. I know some Redemptorists in Dublin and was asked whether I would join the board. It was not a month later. As far as I know, it was probably the best part of a year later.

The truth is it was a month later and not a year later. Cushnahan joined NIAC on 13 May 2010. Frank Daly joined Ciorani 32 days later, on 14 June 2010. Can we believe anything that he tells us?

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