Firm linked to jailed ex-solicitor Michael Lynn negotiated €10m deal involving State agency

A company being investigated by the gardaí for links to the jailed former solicitor and property developer Michael Lynn negotiated terms with a housing charity in 2021 that would have seen the State finance a development in north Dublin for €10 million.

The deal was abandoned after the company decided to seek permission from Dublin City Council to add a further floor to the planned apartment block. It then sold the site, which it bought in 2021 and valued at about €2 million, for an unknown price to an unconnected Irish builder in October of last year.

One of the former directors of the company has said he became involved in the venture after meeting Lynn and his wife, Bríd Murphy, at a party 3½ years ago, and being introduced, via an intermediary, to a businessman in London who said he wanted to invest in Irish property.

The Garda National Economic Crime Bureau (GNECB) is investigating whether Lynn, who has been jailed for 5½ years for stealing about €18 million from six financial institutions during the property boom, is using Irish companies and property deals to launder money he stole from Irish banks.

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As part of the investigation, the GNECB has raided five premises, frozen bank accounts containing more than €2 million, and is examining Irish companies with apparent links to Lynn.

While Lynn is believed to have spent much of the money he stole from Irish lenders during the boom on property deals in Portugal, Bulgaria and Hungary, gardaí are exploring whether he managed to keep some of the money and is now trying to launder it through the Irish property market.

After fleeing Ireland for Europe in the late 2000s, Lynn moved on to Brazil where he spent 4½ years in jail while unsuccessfully contesting his extradition back to Ireland.

He was extradited in late 2018, faced a trial in 2022 that resulted in a hung jury, but was convicted in December 2023 following a second trial.

[ Michael Lynn, the Celtic Tiger solicitor who flew high and fell fast ]

On Monday, the 55-year-old, who received free legal aid during both trials, was given a sentence of 5½ years, after Judge Martin Nolan gave Lynn credit for the time he spent in jail in Brazil.

Following the sentence, barrister Joe Mulrean, for the prosecution, said there may be a later application for a seizure of assets order and that the assets being investigated included property and money in bank accounts.

In January, armed gardaí carried out dawn raids on the Co Wicklow house where Lynn’s wife and family are living as well as on the Stillorgan home of Bulgarian businessman Yavor Poptoshev (48).

In an affidavit filed in the High Court as part of a claim for damages arising from the raid, Poptoshev said the search was conducted as part of a Garda inquiry into possible money laundering, deception and social welfare fraud by Lynn.

He said he was a friend of Lynn’s, had known him for 14 or 15 years, had worked with him on projects in Portugal, Hungary and Slovakia, and had assisted Lynn with large volumes of legal documentation during Lynn’s criminal trial.

Poptoshev is a director of eight Irish companies set up between 2019-2023, including one, Ribblesway, that bought the house in Brittas, Co Wicklow, where Lynn’s family are living. The detached house was bought in December 2021 for €460,000.

There is no mortgage registered against the Brittas property with Tailte Éireann, formerly the Land Registry, or in Ribblesway’s filings in the Companies Registration Office. The property appears to be the only property owned by Ribblesway.

Among the other companies Poptoshev is a director of are Resi Quantum Solutions Ltd, incorporated in April 2020, with an address on Adelaide Road, Dublin, and Salaport Ltd, incorporated in August 2021, with an address on Camden Street, Dublin.

Salaport bought a site in north Dublin in December 2021 and sold it in October 2023, according to Tailte Éireann records. It filed unaudited financial accounts for the year to August 2022 in which it said it owned a development site that, along with related costs, was worth €2.075 million. It had debts to unidentified creditors of slightly more than €2 million, leaving it with net assets of €100.

A former director of Resi Quantum Solutions, Christopher O’Brien (48), with an address in Baldoyle, Dublin, said he became involved with the company after meeting Lynn and his wife, Bríd Murphy, at a party 3½ years ago. They introduced him to another man, who in turn introduced them to London businessman John Holleran (59), who, O’Brien said, was a second-generation Irishman who wanted to invest in property here.

“I spent a few years doing consultancy work for those guys, but I never got paid, so I left,” O’Brien said. “I must have looked at 30 different sites for them, but I was wasting my time and money.”

O’Brien said they were always “waiting for John to come up with the money” and that he left in December 2020 when “Yavor was coming over to run the companies”.

O’Brien said he was visited by the gardaí last month and gave them all the information and documents he had. He said he never heard any suggestion that there might be a business link between Lynn and the proposed investments in Irish property.

Resi Quantum Solutions has a website on which it refers to the Dublin site, saying it sold it to an approved housing body, and that a sister company would be building the development for the housing body.

In fact the deal with the housing body never went ahead. Heads of terms were agreed between housing charity Respond and Resi Quantum Solutions, in September 2021, that involved funding being provided in tranches by the State-owned Housing Finance Agency. The funding was to allow the charity buy the 36-apartment development on the site for €10.055 million, with the money being paid out in stages as the work was completed and approved.

The price comprised a contract for the site of €1.9 million and an agreement for the completed development of €8.155 million. Resi Quantum never pursued the deal with Respond and instead, having decided to seek permission for a larger development, sold it to a third party. The development now being built on it will have 40 apartments.

As part of the structure for the proposed deal with Respond, a new company was incorporated called Infinite Focus RQ Ltd, with the same registered address as Resi Quantum Solutions, and with Poptoshev as a director. The majority shareholder of the new company was a company in Sofia, Bulgaria, called Grafton Limited.

Company filings in Bulgaria state that Grafton, a real estate management company, was incorporated in February 2020 and that its shares are owned equally by Poptoshev and “Kristofar O’Brayan”. O’Brien said he is not a shareholder in the Bulgarian company and had nothing to do with it.

According to the company register in Slovakia, Grafton Ltd has been the owner of a Slovakian company called Krtek Sro since July 2021, when it took over ownership from a company in Panama called Netwise Construction Group Inc.

Lynn’s wife, Murphy, with an address in Portugal, was registered as an officer of the Slovakian company in June 2017 on the same day as Poptoshev, who at the time had an address in Sofia. Murphy is recorded as resigning in October 2021, while Poptoshev remains an officer of the company, according to the records.

Filings in the Companies Registration Office show that Poptoshev is the 100 per cent owner of three of the Irish companies of which he is a director and a part-owner of others along with Holleran.

Holleran owns Ribblesway and a quarter of the shares in Salaport, according to company filings, and shares ownership with Poptoshev of two other Irish companies, both of which were incorporated in 2023 and neither of which have filed financial accounts. Poptoshev owns half of Salaport and all of Resi Quantum Solutions, by way of another Irish company, Berryloft Limited.

Resi Quantum Solutions, when it was incorporated, was owned by a now dissolved London real estate company.

At Monday’s sentencing hearing, Lynn’s barrister, Paul Comiskey O’Keeffe, handed in character references on behalf of his client. These included one from Holleran who said he had met Lynn through an acquaintance and, while he was aware of his “difficulties”, had wanted to employ him in relation to investments he, Holleran, was making in Ireland.

Lynn, he said, had not gone into business with him as he had been “preoccupied” with his trial, but added that he remained interested in using Lynn’s services in the future.

Requests for comment from Murphy, Poptoshev and Holleran were met with no response.

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