Irish property pair seek to file for bankruptcy in UK

From the - ponzinomics sauce for the banksters clearly isn't sauce for mere commoners - dept.

Rupert Neate: An Irish couple who built up a €1bn (£800m) portfolio of luxury property, stretching from London to Washington DC and Stockholm, will attempt to file for bankruptcy in London on Thursday.
Brian O'Donnell, a high-profile Dublin corporate lawyer, and his psychiatrist wife, Mary Patricia O'Donnell, are accused of being among the Irish "bankruptcy tourists" fleeing to the UK to use Britain's more lenient bankruptcy laws.
The couple, from Killiney, Co Dublin, have relocated to a town house a stone's throw from Westminster to facilitate the filing for bankruptcy here.
Bankrupts face only a year in financial purdah in Britain, compared with 12 years in Ireland.
The O'Donnells had taken advantage of cheap credit, offered by Irish banks before the credit crunch, to build up a huge set of properties, including an office block metres from the British Houses of Parliament. When the credit crunch began to bite the couple found it difficult to pay back their debts.
The couple are engaged in a legal battle with the Bank of Ireland over €75m of debts. The Irish court battle revealed that the couple, who were once listed as the 178th richest in Ireland, have transferred the ownership of three properties worth an estimated €360m to their four children. Lawyers for the Bank of Ireland dismissed the trusts as a "sham".

The properties transferred to their children include the London residence in Barton Street, Westminster. The property is valued at about £13m, up from the £10.5m the O'Donnells' investment company, Vico Barton, paid for it in 2007. The house is just a few doors down from a blue plaque marking the former home of Lawrence of Arabia.
It is understood that the Bank of Ireland could contest the O'Donnells' application for bankruptcy at the high court in London on Thursday.
This year, the Wall Street financial services firm Morgan Stanley moved to seize a €165m Canary Wharf skyscraper from the couple. Morgan Stanley is understood to have taken control of the tower, which houses its European HQ, after refusing to refinance a loan that allowed the O'Donnells to buy the property.
The couple also own the Canary Wharf tower that houses Credit Suisse's European headquarters. The O'Donnells bought 17 Columbus Courtyard for about £120m in 2005.
The pair also paid a record $172.5m for an office block a short distance from the White House, in Washington, which Vico Capital, another O'Donnell business, described as a "trophy class" building with "sweeping views of the White House, the monuments and the Potomac river".
Vico Capital's website still notes that "Irish solicitor Brian O'Donnell has paid a record-setting $172.5m (£86.9m) for an office building in Washington DC".
The couple also spent £194m buying the offices of Sweden's tax authorities in Stockholm.
Despite all this, the O'Donnells are described as low-key and a private family. A source close to the couple said last year: "Most people in Dublin wouldn't know what they looked like. They are an extremely private family and would have hoped to have continued to conduct their business in private."
O'Donnell was one of Dublin's leading commercial lawyers. His practice, Brian O'Donnell solicitors, offers the standard range of commercial expertise including mergers and acquisitions, corporate restructuring, as well as insolvency and tax structuring. His practice, however, is not high profile.
He first diversified into serious property business back in 1999 and, with access to funds from a string of banks including Bank of Ireland, Ulster Bank and Anglo-Irish, made his audacious moves in London, Scandinavia and the US.
Other high-profile Irish business people filing for bankruptcy in Britain include David Drumm, a former chief executive of Ireland's "toxic bank", Anglo Irish, and the property developer John Fleming, who was declared bankrupt by Southend crown court with debts of €1bn.
O'Donnell said: "Our main office has been in London for a very long time and that's why we have applied for bankruptcy here." He said he had tried to negotiate a settlement with the Bank of Ireland eight times, including offering to enter into a individual voluntary arrangement but said the bank had "rejected all our proposals".
The Bank of Ireland declined to comment. O'Donnell declined to comment about the suggestion that he had transferred millions of pounds' worth of property to his adult children.
Another person who has said he is considering filing for bankruptcy in Britain is the former Irish minister and media personality Ivan Yates. Yates, formerly agricultural minister, is saddled with debts of up to €3.5m following the collapse of the bookmaking firm he set up. This year he described his future as "exceptionally bleak" and "full of uncertainty" as he stood down as the breakfast show host of Ireland's Newstalk radio.

Source