DUBLIN: Police in Northern Ireland opened a criminal probe of claims surrounding Cerberus Capital Management LP’s purchase of 4.5 billion pounds ($6.9 billion) of property loans from Ireland’s so-called bad bank, the National Asset Management Agency.
Northern Irish police said they will review allegations by Irish lawmaker Mick Wallace about the 2014 deal and other unspecified “concerns,” according to an e-mailed statement Wednesday. Wallace alleged last week that 7 million pounds of legal fees tied to the deal wound up in an offshore bank account and were earmarked for an unidentified politician or political party.
Some of the world’s biggest asset managers and their law firms are defending their roles in what was the largest deal in NAMA’s history. The probe adds to parliamentary inquiries on both sides of the Irish border as lawmakers review a transaction that gave Cerberus control over hundreds of properties across Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.
“There’s sufficient concern in relation to potential criminal activity surrounding this property deal to instigate an investigation,” Will Kerr, an assistant chief constable with the police force, said in the statement. The probe follows allegations by Tughans, a Belfast law firm involved in the deal, that a former partner left after having misappropriated fees.
The Irish government in Dublin set up NAMA in 2009 to purchase risky real estate assets from the nation’s lenders in an attempt to prevent their collapse, earning it the bad bank nickname. The agency is now selling loans under a strategy to wind up most of its operations by 2018.
