A lawyer at the centre of controversy over the sale of Irish state-owned properties worth more than £1bn in Northern Ireland has denied that any politician benefited financially from the selloff.
Ian Coulter, a former managing partner at the Belfast law firm Tughans, which was involved in negotiating the deal for a US investment fund, confirmed on Wednesday that he had a portion of the fees relating to the transaction transferred to an account he controlled in the Isle of Man. However, Coulter denied that he or any politician had benefited financially.
“The fees payable were paid into a Tughans company account supervised by the firm’s finance team,” he said. “In September 2014, a portion of the fees was retained by Tughans and I instructed Tughans’ finance director to transfer the remaining portion into an external account which was controlled only by me. Not a penny of this money was touched.
“No politician nor any relative of any politician in Northern Ireland was ever to receive any monies in any way as part of this deal. This was never discussed, assumed nor expected.”
Mick Wallace, a leftwing Irish parliamentarian, has alleged that £7m was placed in the Isle of Man account for a politician from Northern Ireland.
In a statement released through a Belfast-based PR firm, Coulter said he had directed the transfer of money for “a complex, commercially and legally sensitive” reason.
He said he had explained to Tughans why he transferred the money, which “will be explained to the appropriate authorities”. He left Tughans in January.
Tughans issued a statement on Wednesday saying that it “strongly disagrees with his version of events”.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland has called in the UK’s National Crime Agency to investigate allegations of bribery and corruption relating to the property deal.
The debt-ridden properties were inherited by the Irish state after the financial crash of 2008. When Ireland nationalised most of its banks, the state created the National Assets Management Agency. Nama took control of around 850 properties in Northern Ireland, which it then tried to sell off to US investment funds.
Wallace, an independent TD, claimed that a payment of £7m was due to be made to a Northern Irish politician. No evidence has been produced in support of the claim.
A fee of £7.5m was paid to Tughans for work it did on behalf of Brown Rudnick, the lawyers that represented Cerberus, the US investment fund that eventually bought Nama’s Northern Ireland properties.
Coulter said in his statement: “I have not received any personal financial benefit for my work on this transaction. Neither I nor any third party has received any part of the £7.5m fees.”
Tughans said it disagreed with Coulter’s “version of events surrounding the treatment, discovery and retrieval of the professional fees and his exit from the practice”.
It said it had passed all documentation relating to this to the Law Society of Northern Ireland. “The firm voluntarily brought the matter to the attention of the Law Society and will continue to cooperate with any inquiry,” it said.
Coulter disputed this, saying the money that was transferred to an external account was not “discovered” or “retrieved” by the Law Society or Tughans during an audit. “In fact, I transferred the money back to Tughans in early December 2014 and I brought this to their attention,” he said.
“From late November until early January, discussions took place to try to resolve the matter. In January 2015 these discussions broke down and I decided to resign from Tughans. Terms and conditions for my resignation were agreed between me and Tughans.”
