Report: Lender pursues property in 15 counties

One of the country’s most controversial sub-prime lenders is vigorously seeking to repossess dozens of properties in at least 15 counties after every one of his borrowers went into default.

Much of the funds given out originated with a US investment fund run by Ronald Weisz’s father, Stanley Weisz. Mr Weisz Sr was one of the key players convicted in the 1980s as part of the FBI’s Abscam affair, which inspired the Hollywood movie American Hustle.

These funds were invested in Ireland through a Central Bank-licensed firm which has initiated 50 High Court repossession cases in recent years. Regulators granted the retail credit licence in spite of concerns about the criminal background of the company’s owner, Ronald Weisz.

Weisz’s operation, Secured Property Loans Ltd, was licensed by the Central Bank in Nov 2009. It has emerged that in 2012 the Central Bank initiated an unpublicised consumer-related probe into SPLL. This prompted the directors, Mr Weisz Jr and his wife, to volunteer to sever trading restrictions. They have transferred loans for principle private residences out of the company and into Mr Weisz Jr’s name and agreed to limit the lending. The Central Bank will not comment on the matter.

At present, SPLL has charges against approximately 800 hectares of land and at least 22 homes, commercial buildings and residential sites. The company’s accounts have reported the value of debts due to it is €2.8m. However, a trawl of court cases, land records, and customer statements reveals the sum it is actually chasing is a multiple of this.

Mr Weisz Jr, has said this difference reveals the extreme drop in the value of properties used as security.

“Every single loan I have is in the courts. Every one,” said Mr Weisz Jr.

The Central Bank controversially granted SPLL a retail credit licence in 2009 despite doubts being raised in the Dáil about Mr Weisz Jr’s ability to pass its personal probity test.

In 1994, Mr Weisz Jr was convicted of defrauding banks in New York. Before that, he made a voluntary petition for bankruptcy. After the bankruptcy trial, non-dischargable judgments were awarded against him because a judge ruled that he and the company he ran had defrauded investors.

Altogether, $431,000, before interest, of judgments from banks and individuals were registered against him in Long Island. They were never satisfied.

A detailed inquiry into his business contacts and investors has also revealed a number of colourful cases.

The most notable has been with his father, Mr Weisz Sr, who the FBI believed was connected to one of New York’s largest mafia families when he was convicted of bribing a politician after a high-profile sting in the early 1980s.

This sting operation has now been used as the basis for David O. Russell’s Golden Globe-nominated film American Hustle.

Mr Weisz Jr’s two principal loan companies received close to €10m in loans from his father’s US operations.

Another controversial, but separate, connection involved Mr Weisz Jr setting up a loan company for an English accountant who was at the time laundering the proceeds of a £76m fraud.

Mr Weisz Jr was not involved in that crime and he has stressed that, regardless of the actions of those he has done business with, he has never allowed illegitimate money to pass through his company or his father’s pension investment fund.