The biggest NAMA story of the week was the revelation in the High Court that Mary McCabe, wife of high profile NAMA developer John McCabe, owned an 8-carat diamond ring and that NAMA had successfully sought the appointment of receivers to it. The story attracted a spectrum of reaction from outrage at the humiliation of a woman in open court to outrage at the notion that an asset worth at least €140,000 should not be used to help pay down a €20m personal judgment against Mary McCabe in favour of NAMA and ultimately the taxpayer.
But apart from the rights and wrongs and ethics, another angle is emerging in the story.
The Irish Times reported on Thursday evening “she had failed to disclose the jewellery in her first statement of affairs but did so in her second.”
The Sunday Independent reports today “private correspondence sent by the daughter of well-known developer John McCabe using the family’s company email account alerted Nama to the existence of his wife Mary’s €150,000, 8.38-carat diamond ring” – the Sindo report is remarkable in not providing a single bit of additional detail on the “private correspondence sent by the daughter”, and how exactly NAMA was “alerted”
Last June 2012, we learned that NAMA was considering referring one developer to the Gardai for making a false declaration of assets. This was before NAMA went to the High Court and secured nearly €300m in total judgments against various members of the McCabe family, including a €20m judgment against Mary McCabe. There is no evidence of any connection between the McCabe family and the NAMA Garda investigation.
So, have we heard the end of the yarn about the 8-carat ring, a yarn which bears the hallmarks of a Georgian melodrama about a lost or stolen five shilling note? Who knows, but what we do know is that it is a criminal offence to knowingly make a false statement to NAMA and although we don’t know the circumstances in Mary McCabe’s own case with her jewelry, we do have reports of there being two statements from Mary McCabe, and of NAMA being alerted to the existence of the jewelry from a family email.
NAMA Wine Lake 
The spread of price on that stone is $170,000.00. People witter on about diamonds as if all are excellent and deserving of top dollar. The vast majority are schlock and pass only because they carry that name.
……… It is not the end of the story. NAMA acted like a bully, not like a a communicator (except for ensuring that its reporters were in the court so that Mary McCabe could be humiliated) and it will come back to haunt them this week – in the same court. Think egg and faces
Contrary to John Gallaher’s great video, and to the receiver’s and NAMA’s impending surprise, it will be shown that in fact “Diamonds are NOT forever!”
If I was NAMA I’d take Will Smith’s advice and take a vacation trip to MIami
@ WSTT
So what should NAMA policy be in relation to personal items such as jewellery, vintage cars, paintings, holiday homes, personal pensions or indeed the family home itself?
What is NAMA policy?
I would be prepared to say that the family home, even trophy homes, provided they have been the family home for at least 10years, should be untouchable. So should a pension, perhaps equivalent to that of a PS Executive Officer.
After that everything should be on the table with a de minimus value for personal items.
Nothing more.
Do you think the applicant for JA (jobseekers allowance) would be allowed to keep a €150,000 jewellery piece and still get JA, if they turn up at ‘Hatch 13’?
Further, did the lady in question have to go to court? If she believed that she had a legal and common law entitlement to keep the item, yes. But one assumes that she was asked to forfeit ownership before any court proceedings.
Why the hell are we still dealing with personal guarantees for what are commercial loans. These Notes have to be open to question. And if the loan to the client didn’t make sense to the bank without a PG how the holy can they arrive to court. Some brass neck going on here. Even the Lloyds Names don’t have that level of destruction and they have total liability. That call after the Exxon Valdez left them with a decent level of lifestyle.
@JG, The motto on the clock tower at the Curragh racecourse says “Time tells all”. In a very short time (this week), the actual sequence of events will surface and as I alluded to, it is not all as reported. NAMA has not being communicating with it’s borrower and acted as a bully and unilaterally last week in order to embarrass the borrowers and set an example. Because of that it will have egg on it’s face.
The real story has not been told and is more international than reported. The receiver is a eunuch…… stable doors and horses.
@JR, Apologies Joseph, I meant to address the last post to you not JG. You ask some interesting questions.
The main problem I have is a moral one. I see NAMA as a successor to banks that we have bailed out 3 times previously. Banks that are morally and criminally corrupt and that even as we write are sending in wet-behind-the-ear accountants to prepare “reports” on SMEs for the sole purpose of calling in loans because they (the banks) need to deleverage.
All pretense of relationship management is gone. The bullies are in charge.
Over the next year the number of SMEs that will be put into receivership or under the proxy “management” of AIB and Bank of Ireland is going to increase enormously. A pogrom is beginning. And it is being perpetrated by people who have defrauded their clients willy nilly by mis-selling swaps and deliberately and knowingly overcharging interest rates on their clients accounts for the past decade and more.
The government is complicit in it, because it has committed to saving these putrid edifices and the clowns that run them, by screwing the taxpayer and the borrowers to the maximum possible extent, even though the banks’ business ethics and relationships have been defiled by fraud. They should have been closed when the scale of their gross incompetence, fraudulent activity and insolvency was discovered. The stench should have been released, not bottled up. It will out eventually, despite the governments best efforts – and the attempted damage limitation will be for nought.
For context that ring would pay 6 nurses annual salaries on the new scale.
Stop seeing NAMA as a putrid entity, it is the only vessel that might recover some of the cash that was blown by the building oligarchy that ran the state into the ground
@fergaloh, I am not aware of the new scale of nurses’ salaries, but I would wager that it compares well with most other european countries.
I described the banks as putrid – as in corrupt, not NAMA. I described NAMA as the successor to those banks, in that it acquired their fraudulent loans.
As for the building oligarchy blowing cash that ran the State into the ground, you are attempting to rewrite history. The banks created a credit bubble, the builders, mortgagees and a fair amount of SMEs borrowed excessively from those banks cheerled by the politicians and the media. Instead of letting the participants and the bondholders of the banks sort the problem out between them, the government interfered and socialised all the losses. That’s what ran the State into the ground.. That one decision – nothing else.
Don’t get me started on NAMA recovering cash, even Joan Burton has let slip publicly that it will lose a further €10 million plus. The Mary McCabe incident amply illustrates the competence of NAMA, still stuck with their heads in the WAGs frilly knickers, collecting baubles instead of dealing with maximising returns on the €70 billion of assets with which they have been charged.
And they can’t even deal with the baubles competently. So hasty were they in getting to court to avail of the opportunity for publicity at the expense of the McCabes, that they acted like the Keystone Cops. They stand in front of Peter Kelly looking for a receiver over a ring that is already sold! I haven’t watched anything as hilarious since the Monthy Python parrot sketch.
NAMA putrid? Maybe not yet. But incompetent and pathetic – definitely.
@WSTT
re The banks and the NAMA successor
“They should have been closed when the scale of their gross incompetence, fraudulent activity and insolvency was discovered. ”
I could not agree more.
” Instead of letting the participants and the bondholders of the banks sort the problem out between them, the government interfered and socialised all the losses. That’s what ran the State into the ground.. That one decision – nothing else. ”
Again, you are largely correct.
Many people, looking for explanations of genetic weakness in the Irish herd psyche, point to the run-up to the implosion. But, in reality, it was the Sept 28th /Sept 29th 2008 decision and subsequent idiocy, cowardice and greed, that turned the mess into a disaster.
“That’s what ran the State into the ground. That one decision – nothing else.” Just out of curiosity: what would have happened if the State had not guaranteed the banks? (This isn’t a rhetorical or sarcastic question, BTW: I’m genuinely curious as to what people think.)
There wouldn’t be an unmanageable, enormous debt lumbered on every citizen of this country. The average cost of recovery per person in the EU in their respective countries is €192 but in Ireland it’s €9,000 per person. Also there would be no need for NAMA as there wouldn’t be the same scale of debt recovery to necessitate a specific organisation. No Nama means no market interference and a free arena in which respective interest groups could operate both in commercial and residential property.
Socialism, restriction and government interference has never worked. I’m not saying capitalism is a perfect solution, but it’s the only one so far that has delivered such improvements in infrastructure and quality of life and life expectancy that any other system of economy. By creating NAMA and harping back to a flawed 19th century political theory, it can only be bad. Corruption and bad practice are typically rife in these structures.
The weaker banks would fail, the stronger ones would suffer in the short to medium term before organically recovering, along with the economy. What we’re experiencing now is an absolute unmitigated disaster. I would wager that any FF politician originally involved in the bail out, who is honest with themselves, regrets the decision deeply and recognises it as the single largest crippling factor on our shattered economy.
@WSTT: Is it really already sold? That’s embarrassing. So did NAMA put a receiver on someone else’s ring? If it weren’t so embarrassing for us as a country, it would be funny. People talk about the lack of commercial experience in NAMA, what about the lack of general IQ?
And to put it in an alternative context to the nursing salaries, the value of the ring will probably be equivalent to McDonagh’s alleged salary for about 4 months if we’re lucky. It would also be interesting to know how much of the tax payer’s money was used to run in and out of the courts for this ridiculous charade.
@CSPAN, Yes. It was sold in Miami. The country is run by schoolteachers. There is no justice in the courts. Peter Kelly’s court reminds me of Judge Roy Bean and is just a rubber stamp for NAMA, the banks and the government. A kangaroo court fit for the banana republic that we have become.
Any personal earnings that the government doesn’t take in taxes will be garnisheed by the banks as they move on the SMEs and people’s mortgages where they recklessly lent against overpriced property.
Anyone left in the country will soon be back to digging praties to survive.
And then to top it all we have the knicker fetishers of NAMA down in the kangaroo court oblivious to the fact that the diamond ring they are putting a receiver in to mind is long gone. The term “assholes” doesn’t do them justice – But as farce, it is great entertainment.
Any idea of the current owner? So how does that work, is the asset now compromised by the presence of a court ordered receiver? Correct me if I’m wrong but I always understood that a receivership action applies to the asset not any individual. How will this affect the current owner, will they have legal come back against Nama or will the receiver be personally liable? This has the potential to be a global embarrassment on a scale these idiots haven’t seen before. More ‘thick paddy’ jibes coming our way…
Mary may have kept her ring…and this would not be doing the rounds with the xpat community.
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=jOliu0yCMI0&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DjOliu0yCMI0
@JG, I love it, John
@CSPAN, It was sold at a jewelry fair. (not like a fair day in Cavan). Peter Kelly’s writ doesn’t run in Miami for civil matters. The McCabes are honest people and I’m sure that the proceeds will be given to NAMA.
When John McCabe lost £2 million in London in the meltdown in the early nineties, he came back to Ireland and made it back on a Woodies development in Tallaght. He took the profits from the Woodies sale and paid all his debts off in London – when he could just have put the UK problem into liquidation.
What this situation represents is an indictment of NAMA. It demonstrates that it’ s a bully, unable to sustain a relationship with its debtors that is workable and healthy. When there is this lack of communication, it is to the detriment of the taxpayer.
Spinning propaganda to the great unwashed readers of the tabloids, in order to show how they can intimidate a woman and collect her jewelry, does not cut it, when billions are being lost due to incompetence.
Their performance down in the court of appointing a receiver to a diamond ring that had already been sold is risible.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/courts/diamond-ring-sought-by-nama-already-sold-court-told-3376793.html
Just hit the papers, but it’s spun in such a way to focus attention on the fact that it was sold after the initial demand for the ring, rather the imbecilic, typical stupidity on the part of Nama in not establishing if the ring was even in Mrs. McCabe’s possession before engaging the courts and receiver.
I have no doubt as to John McCabe’s integrity, he is a very successful employer who deserves none of this heavy handedness.
In terms of Nama’s attitude to debtors, in my opinion it’s just so they can turn around to the Irish public and appear as the champions of the tax payer, by publicly destroying a ‘big bad developer’ and buying themselves some breathing room in which to continue operating and paying themselves obscene salaries, using propaganda to deflect from their incompetence.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2013/0204/breaking53.html
The spin is in. Not a word of apology about inability to communicate sensibly and civilly and wasting the court’s time.
Jesus wept….. This lot hope to recoup €30 billion. No chance. I’d be surprised if they know what building they are in.