Nama inquiry delayed as agency fails to hand over documents

The National Asset Management Agency's failure to hand over certain documentation regarding its controversial Project Eagle sale in Northern Ireland has prompted a six-month delay in an official investigation.

The commission of inquiry, led by former High Court judge John Cooke, said Nama was co-operating with its investigation but that its method of collecting documents had omitted relevant material.

The commission said it had received 34,000 documents relating to the €1.6 billion loan deal in two separate tranches in February and March this year.

However, an analysis showed that the certain documents provided to the commission by other parties had not been captured by the agency’s trawl.

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‘Earmarked’

Nama sold its Northern Ireland property loans portfolio, dubbed Project Eagle, to US vulture fund Cerberus in 2014. A year later, the Independent TD Mick Wallace alleged in the Dáil that £7 million had been lodged in a bank account in the Isle of Man that was "reportedly earmarked for a Northern Ireland politician or party" following the transaction.

The allegation sparked a number of inquiries. The Government-led investigation was to have delivered its report on the controversy this month, but this has now been delayed until December.

In its latest interim report, the commission noted that, since its establishment, it has been engaged in obtaining access to documentation, emails, correspondence, working papers, minutes and other records relating to its investigation.

It said it had made 16 individual requests for documents from Nama, all of which have been complied with in full by the agency.

Third party

However, it noted that Nama had engaged the services of a third party “to undertake the work of identifying, retrieving, checking and transferring this material”.

This was being done by use of a software program based on filters and keyword searches designed to capture relevant items “to the exclusion of material that was deemed, by the algorithm, not to be relevant”.

A Nama spokesman said: “Nama notes the second interim report published by the commission. The commission notes that it continues to receive voluntary co-operation from Nama and Nama reiterates its commitment to providing its full support to the commission’s work.”