NAMA issues passed to Gardai

The Irish police have appointed a senior officer to liaise with the state-owned NAMA property fund over alleged impropriety by a former employee, Prime Minister Enda Kenny said on Wednesday.

NAMA, the country’s ‘bad bank’, is one of the world’s largest property groups, having purged local banks of 74 billion euros of risky loans following a property crash that pushed Ireland into a bailout three years ago.

Allegations of misconduct at NAMA emerged on Monday when member of parliament Darragh O’Brien told the upper house of parliament that he had been given documents that he said showed that information about NAMA properties was passed on to third-party investors to confer financial advantage on them.

On Wednesday he said he had passed the information on to police.

“The Garda Commissioner … indicated that he had directed a senior officer to liaise with NAMA to ensure all of these matters of concern were fully pursued,” Kenny told parliament.

A spokesman for NAMA told Reuters the agency had made a complaint to police in February about allegations of the misuse of information by a mid-ranking executive who had left the agency.

The spokesman declined to give more details about the alleged violations or say whether the complaint was related to the allegations made by O’Brien. Source: Reuters