NAMA to recruit more investigators to snoop on developers’ finances

Back in April 2011, it was reported on here that NAMA was recruiting “forensic managers and analysts” to examine the finances of the Agency’s debtors, the developers. These were to be NAMA employees though it is not clear how many, if any, NAMA eventually employed. Today NAMA issued a tender for the appointment to a panel of for the provision of “Credit Verification Services” which seems to indicate NAMA is ramping up its efforts to track down assets of its developers.

The full tender document is here but here are the headlines:

Interested companies should have expertise across ALL of the following jurisdictions :France,Germany,Ireland,Portugal,Spain,UKandUSA. The competencies required are “asset tracing and investigation services” and “financial forensic investigation” and “computer technology”. Contracts are for 2-4 years.

 

And here’s a bit more detail on the services required:

 

Asset tracing investigations

Develop appropriate strategies to identify and locate assets locally and worldwide. Assets may be real or intangible properties and may be held in offshore vehicles and/or in complex corporate structures.

Identifying, gathering and analysing information from public and discreet sources to provide a greater understanding of a debtor’s assets and interests and to inform the overall credit management strategy.

Specific services that may be required to perform an asset tracing investigation include but are not limited to:

• Review of publicly available data sources and asset registers (including property, corporate and lifestyle registers).

• Review of corporate information obtained through public records searches including audited accounts.

• Conduct enquiries into lifestyle, social and business activeties of debtors.

Financial forensic review services

Apply investigative know how and forensic accounting skills to:

• Understand and analyse available financial and banking data to ensure full understanding and visibility on a debtor’s credit standing.

• Understand multi-layered complex personal, corporate and trust structures. In particular, provision of the following services may be required:

• Review of company books and records including bank statements and primary ledgers.

• Conduct interviews with company management and professional advisors including the debtor’s advisors. The Provider shall document all such meetings.

• Provision of expert witness reports.

• Computer forensic techniques to support investigations.

• Provision of any other forensic/corporate intelligence services ancillary to the above that may be required by NAMA from time to time.

And just to cheer everyone up, here is the picture again that accompanied the blogpost in April.