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Developers hid shares, racehorse and a creche

Nama is pursuing legal action against nine property developers who failed to make full disclosure of their assets to the agency.

One file has been sent to the Garda Fraud Squad, Nama chief executive Brendan McDonagh told the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee yesterday.

“We ask for full disclosure,” said Mr McDonagh. “If we have suspicions about a particular property developer then we will engage in an asset search.”

Mr McDonagh said Nama had forked out €400,000 in fees for asset searches on property developers.

These searches had yielded up assets of €5m.

Mr McDonagh was responding to a question by Fine Gael TD Paschal Donohue about what Nama was doing with property developers who had tried to conceal assets from the agency when it had acquired their underlying loans.

Mr Donohue cited a number of examples from the recent Comptroller & Auditor General’s report into Nama, which included evidence of developers attempting to hide racehorses, a creche, company shares and, in one case, 29 carpark spaces from the agency.

“We take it very seriously if a property developer does not make full disclosure.

“They are then subject to enforcement action,” said the Nama boss.

“I have heard every excuse including the dog ate my homework.” Most property developers blamed their financial advisers and accountants for the oversight, said Mr McDonagh.

Mr Donohue said that he had constituents who are in talks with their banks about restructuring debts.

“If any of them concealed assets they would be in serious trouble,” he said.

Mr Donohue wanted to know if the public can expect anything to arise from these investigations.

Mr McDonagh said the cases were extremely complex. One file had been sent to the Garda Fraud Squad, which would in effect become a test case, he said.

There would be a meeting soon between Nama and the Garda Fraud Squad on whether or not to proceed.

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