SENIOR Nama executives were looked at ‘like idiots’ as they sold off Irish properties in Britain for far less than they were worth, an Irish senator has said.
Fianna Fáil’s Darragh O’Brien has called for a Dáil investigation into the conduct of Ireland’s bad bank as he accused it of making a rushed bid to sell off its holdings “far far too quickly”.
The sales include a number high street properties London and deprived Irish taxpayers of hundreds of millions of euros, he claims.
“I know of properties, particularly in Britain, that were sold to other investors who looked at us like we were idiots,” Mr O’Brien told The Irish Post.”
We were selling these with good rental yields, with good tenants, and there was no need to sell them on. We could have held on to them and made more over that time.”
Mr O’Brien made his comments two weeks after The Irish Post revealed that the Irish exchequer may have missed out on as much as £7.4billion due to Nama’s premature sale of Battersea Power Station.
A spokesperson for the iconic London building, which was sold by the bad bank for £400million in 2012, estimated its value at £8billion.
But Nama has defended its decision to sell the power station.
To realise the building’s full value, a spokesperson for the bad bank said it would have had to pay £200million for Lloyds Bank’s 50 per cent stake before investing up to £5billion to redevelop it.
“That would not have been a reasonable risk to take with Irish taxpayers’ money on such a large-scale project (involving a preserved structure) which has been the subject of numerous failed development attempts in the past,” he added.
But Mr O’Brien said the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee should investigate a number of property sales.
“From what I am seeing and hearing, even if just 10 per cent of it is true, we are not getting, as a taxpayer, value for money,” he added. “We are not getting the returns that we could get if there was a more strategic view in place.”
Mr O’Brien claimed a number of deals on London properties made “absolutely no sense”.
But the senator refused to name the specific deals he wanted to be investigated, claiming it could jeopardise ongoing garda investigations after he handed over a number of files relating to “allegations about the misuse of information within Nama” before Christmas.
Using parliamentary privilege, he told the Seanad last December that the Garda Commissioner has been requested to investigate allegations of corruption and impropriety at Nama.
Included among Nama’s high-profile London portfolio was the Citi Tower in Canary Wharf, the flagship Louis Vuitton store on Bond Street and the landmark 23 Savile Row office block in Mayfair.
Responding to Mr O’Brien’s criticism, a Nama spokesperson said the organisation had taken a “strategic decision” to focus its sales activity on London to hit a Troika-imposed target of redeeming €7.5billion by the end of 2013.
London properties were sold ahead of Irish holdings because the English capital remained “a safe haven” for asset value during the financial crisis, he added.
