Claim against oil agent’s wife dismissed

A $162m (€115m) claim by an American company against the wife of an Irish oil broker has been dismissed by the High Court in Dublin.
Mr Justice Daniel Herbert said that while he would dismiss the claim against Sandra O’Neill, he would continue to hear the claim against her husband, Ed O’Neill, on Sept 23.

Mr O’Neill, of Attracta Rd, Cabra, Dublin, is the son of Edward O’Neill Sr, who was killed in the Dublin-Monaghan bombing in 1974. He and his wife were sued over an alleged failure to honour an agreement to share a $300m (€213m) consulting fee associated with an oil deal.

The fee was linked to a deal by Russian and Venezuelan corporations to distribute oil to a Turkish corporation.

Yesterday, Judge Herbert said Ed O’Neill was a taxi driver from Cabra and he could not afford to go to the US and defend the case against him and his wife.

The court heard Mr O’Neill had signed a fee distribution agreement in 2008 and in 2010 the US judgment was made against both of them. Mr O’Neill claimed the judgment was inconclusive and therefore could not be enforced in Ireland.

The proceedings had been brought by Illinois firm CJN LLC, which claimed Mr O’Neill was to distribute the money between various American beneficiaries but had initially claimed he could not transfer the funds.

The firm also claimed that he later made several false claims, including that the funds had been seized by the US Treasury and had been caught up in an alleged FBI investigation into links between corrupt bankers and Colombian drug cartels.

It had also been claimed Mr O’Neill had been working with a friend in the CIA to sort out the matter.

Mr O’Neill was part of a lawsuit to force the Government to hand over sensitive files on the 1974 bombing.

In the current lawsuit, some of the beneficiaries claimed that they, relying on representations from Mr O’Neill, had travelled to Zurich in to meet him in 2010. They claimed the meeting was about the transfer of funds and they had left Switzerland empty-handed because Mr O’Neill had not turned up.

It was claimed that Mr O’Neill, arising from his purported capacity as an agent for MDM Oil Ltd, received $300m. Several of the alleged beneficiaries had formed a company, CJN LLC, with head offices in Illinois, to pursue their claims against him and his wife.