£45m shirley deserves its own thread....any advance on 45?

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Cap'n Grumpy
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Re: £7m shirley deserves its own thread

Post by Cap'n Grumpy »

rorybestsbigbaldnoggin wrote: Nesbitt has set this up about as well as he can:
Not a particularly high recommendation :roll:
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Re: £7m shirley deserves its own thread

Post by HwoodMike2umate »

This topic keeps bubbling along nicely - here's the latest from Belfast Telegraph -
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/ ... 33754.html
http://www.cryptome.org/

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Re: £7m shirley deserves its own thread

Post by Cap'n Grumpy »

Who'da guessed? ....... allegedly! :lol:
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Re: £7m shirley deserves its own thread

Post by rorybestsbigbaldnoggin »

For those with the time, Bryson's and McGuinness' evidence briefings have been transcribed and are available here:

http://aims.niassembly.gov.uk/officialr ... spx?&cid=9


The level of detail, in Bryson's in particular, is astonishing. He says he has/will provide the Committee with full documentary evidence of everything he alleges (except one piece of evidence which is in possession of the NCA), so the Committee Report and evidence annexes will confirm everything.

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Re: £7m shirley deserves its own thread

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rorybestsbigbaldnoggin wrote:For those with the time, Bryson's and McGuinness' evidence briefings have been transcribed and are available here:

http://aims.niassembly.gov.uk/officialr ... spx?&cid=9


The level of detail, in Bryson's in particular, is astonishing. He says he has/will provide the Committee with full documentary evidence of everything he alleges (except one piece of evidence which is in possession of the NCA), so the Committee Report and evidence annexes will confirm everything.

If I was Robbo I'd be getting on a plane to Florida, and not coming back . . .
Would that be to the house in Florida he got for......................
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Re: £7m shirley deserves its own thread

Post by BuckRogers »

As I said a few pages ago someone has fed Jay-me all of that information.

He's thicker than dung but his hatred for mainstream unionism and lack of fecks to give with regards to court, criminal records and possibly prison make him an ideal conduit.

Interesting times ahead, and the transcripts are most definitely worth a read.
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Re: £7m shirley deserves its own thread

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The FBI may wish to have a word too, so Florida may not be ideal. Costa Rica is probably a better bet.
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Re: £7m shirley deserves its own thread

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BuckRogers wrote:As I said a few pages ago someone has fed Jay-me all of that information.

He's thicker than dung but his hatred for mainstream unionism and lack of fecks to give with regards to court, criminal records and possibly prison make him an ideal conduit.

Interesting times ahead, and the transcripts are most definitely worth a read.
Plus has Jay-me any collateral besides a few flegs, dare say if any of those named were innocent it would be a total waste of time to take him to court for libel
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Re: £7m shirley deserves its own thread

Post by Rooster »

BuckRogers wrote:As I said a few pages ago someone has fed Jay-me all of that information.

He's thicker than dung but his hatred for mainstream unionism and lack of fecks to give with regards to court, criminal records and possibly prison make him an ideal conduit.

Interesting times ahead, and the transcripts are most definitely worth a read.
Someone has fed him that lot and perhaps Jay-me is not as daft as we think as from that transcript he seemed pretty cool about the whole thing.
The entire thing stinks and Mick Wallaces claim that there were a lot more "fixers" fees involved today is probably correct as well.
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Re: £7m shirley deserves its own thread

Post by Snipe Watson »

Going by the transcript and the manner in which he delivered it, he would appear to be well briefed and well prepared. He may be a prat and a loose cannon, but he's not a fool.
Last edited by Snipe Watson on Thu Sep 24, 2015 5:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: £7m shirley deserves its own thread

Post by WestDr »

Rooster wrote:
BuckRogers wrote:As I said a few pages ago someone has fed Jay-me all of that information.

He's thicker than dung but his hatred for mainstream unionism and lack of fecks to give with regards to court, criminal records and possibly prison make him an ideal conduit.

Interesting times ahead, and the transcripts are most definitely worth a read.
Someone has fed him that lot and perhaps Jay-me is not as daft as we think as from that transcript he seemed pretty cool about the whole thing.
The entire thing stinks and Mick Wallaces claim that there were a lot more "fixers" fees involved today is probably correct as well.
From a read of the transcript, particularly the smallish part of technical detail, someone has to be feeding it to him. The rest is largely hearsay and coincidence, and as noted by others above, Mr Bryson just isn't worth suing or jailing. I'd be utterly amazed if the accountants/bankers/lawyers/architects/surveyors/developers in NI didn't know each other and understanding how the process works and what the planning view will be is something any business man would be interested in knowing - it isn't all just pot luck and the lowest/highest price. Even the relevant EU Procurement Directives allow flexibility there. No developer puts up all the money straight away - that's where the bankers and lawyers come in and that's how the vast majority of development happens.

Tbh I've always thought that the pay-off for those interested in 'helping out' around who was going to win the Project Eagle (and other NAMA) auctions was a deal on either existing loans in the package or plum sites, and fascinated to see that happening. Whether it's in Cerberus' interests to do so is a commercial decision on their part, but I'd be very surprised to see any smoking guns with their name on them around any "payments". As for the Bryson comment to 'confidential information re: previous planning applications' - well, that's what the internet is for and contacts.

The one question I've always had about this is "what right did Tughans have to ask for the £7m back ?" If it was properly invoiced against a contract with Tughans, then why give it back ? If there's no contract etc, then why pay it in the first place ?

And finally Mick Wallace seems to be wanting to up the ante though - think the mods will need to change the thread title soon.
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Re: £45m shirley deserves its own thread....any advance on 4

Post by Rooster »

Was the 7 million invoiced or contracted or did it just appear and move around though is the real big question.
As for deals and pocket liners for buying back loans at below value I wouldn't be surprised if it is true but it will be difficult to prove any of it.
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Re: £45m shirley deserves its own thread....any advance on 4

Post by WestDr »

Rooster wrote:Was the 7 million invoiced or contracted or did it just appear and move around though is the real big question.
As for deals and pocket liners for buying back loans at below value I wouldn't be surprised if it is true but it will be difficult to prove any of it.
Apologies for the length, but been wanting to write this for a while.....

Well, we know that Tughans had a contract with Brown Rudnick, who themselves had a contract with Cerberus. How Tughans got into this would be interesting to know, but I would hazard that Mr Coulter had suggested to the rest of the partners/directors that he had a good lead with potential bidders for the NAMA Project Eagle portfolio. We know one of these was PIMCO, and he'd earlier put together a group and had a chat/made an unsolicited proposal to PIMCO to help them buy the NI loans. This is the offer PIMCO took to NAMA to ask about earlier in 2014 and the one that NAMA turned down. Coulter then sorted out the reasons why it was turned down (?conflicts of interest perhaps?) and found someone else (Cerberus).

So Cerberus start seriously looking into the project - and Tughans probably start doing some serious work on the properties in the portfolio. With so many different lenders, borrowers, other bank's interests, and so on, I'd think there'd be some serious due diligence to be done (leases to check, planning permissions expired/still valid, borrowing agreements, active/pending court cases etc) - that's lot of legal eagles.

Two points - (i) Tughans wouldn't be doing this for nothing, and (ii) all the staff working on it had to have a job code to put their time to (standard professional practice). This means that someone in Tughans reviewed and authorised the arrangement with Brown Rudnick. At a rough estimate from the 54 professional staff listed on the website, standard rates etc, Tughans probably turnover somewhere between £15m and £25m p.a. So a project of this size, commitment and potential income was both very attractive and doubtless a bit of a head-turner (think of all those boxes at UIster Rugby and houses in Cultra.......). Mind you, if I was Cerberus, I'd have had them on cost-only (and severely marked down from usual hourly rates !) and a large success fee element. This sort of arrangement is something that usual governance would mean is taken to the Board of Directors/Partners and I'd be confident that it did go there.

Lost in that bigger wash (which is where no doubt the £45m figure comes from) is the payments to others - amongst it the £7m that ended up in the IoM via Ian Coulter (a matter of public record). Even if Tughans turnover is 2x the figure estimated above, most firms have some form of general authorisation rules as to who can sign the bank transfer forms. The managing partner would doubtless be on this list, and any member of Tughans accounts staff would be wanting all the relevant signatures on the page before any button was pressed. (Btw, don't forget that this is not a client account, but the company's own money.) And the bank doing the tranfser would also probably be interested under money-laundering regulations. So, no finance director is going to either set up a job code or authorise a transfer of that size on the basis of "it just appeared and moved around".

Therefore, the likelihood is that there is some form of formal arrangement between Tughans and Ian Coulter. So, if there is and it was pre-agreed in order for the money to leave Tughans, what made Coulter send it back ? After all, it must have been part of the bigger arrangement with Brown Rudnick.... and if no one at Tughans queried it or wanted their backside covered about it, I'd be most suprised - after all, they're all lawyers ! Therefore, somewhere there is something that made Coulter give it back - and that Tughans had to make him do it. Tbh, being struck off might not do it for me wrt to £7m, but then perhaps the Law Society of NI carries a bigger stick to beat the CEO of the Province's largest law firm (Tughan's website) with than I might know. The report of the Law Society of NI into Tughans governance will take few prisoners and shut a few stable doors - but after all, the NCA will be doing the real banging up !

The problem with it all is that the money only got so far. We'll never know if the IoM bank account was the final destination and all the recipients were to be given a day, the ATM card and a big bag to take their fill, or something more sophisticated was planned. The real action is what the NCA can get someone to say, and what they hold over them to get the plea bargain option to work. If no one says anything, and there are no records, then it'll just be Tughans left there and their 'procedures and processes' for such things.....

The rest of it - Stormont, the Dail, Mick Wallace etc is just political theatre, being seen to do something and election-related. As the NI Civil Service showed in their response (exactly what I'd've done in their place tbh), and Mr Bryson is playing up to - he's clearly read the 'no such thing as bad publicity' line. Reading all the transcripts, I'd say that MMG's response earlier is somewhat interesting - effectively "if it's going to be something I'll not want to know about, my SpAd doesn't tell me"..... and this for the deal that was the biggest property deal in NI history. What had he heard about it I wonder ?
Last edited by WestDr on Thu Sep 24, 2015 8:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: £45m shirley deserves its own thread....any advance on 4

Post by Russ »

Tl;dr, summary?
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Re: £45m shirley deserves its own thread....any advance on 4

Post by WestDr »

Russ wrote:Tl;dr, summary?
The bits in bold are for you Russ.....
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