Michael Lynn: The Celtic Tiger solicitor who flew high and fell fast

Former solicitor Michael Lynn, who rode the Celtic Tiger property boom, has been found guilty of stealing almost €18 million from six financial institutions.

Lynn, who transformed himself from a small-time solicitor with a practice in west Dublin to a property tycoon with an international investment portfolio and a dream home in Howth with its own private beach, was found guilty on 10 of the 21 charges against him at the conclusion of a second trial.

It was the prosecution’s case that Lynn “fled” to Brazil in 2011, where he was arrested in August 2013 as his extradition has been sought by the Irish authorities. Lynn spent 4½ years in prison in Brazil until he was extradited in March 2018.

Now the married 55-year-old father is in custody again, awaiting the sentencing decision of Judge Martin Nolan which will be given in January.

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Lynn was convicted of 10 counts of stealing about €17.9 million from six financial institutions 16 years ago. The jury was unable to agree on the remaining 11 counts on the indictment.

In what was the second trial Lynn has faced – a 16-week trial in 2022 failed to reach a verdict – the jury heard that the Co Mayo native would give solicitor’s undertakings to banks while sourcing loans from multiple institutions for the purchase of the same properties.

The properties included the Glenlion, which sat on a site of 4.75 acres on Howth Head, and had uninterrupted views over Dublin Bay and its own private beach. Lynn and his wife Bríd Murphy bought the property for more than €5 million in 2006, but never lived in it.

[ Forged signatures, ‘secret deals’ and a Brazilian prison: The full story of Michael Lynn’s Celtic Tiger theft trial ]

[ Michael Lynn found guilty of stealing almost €18m from six financial institutions ]

As a solicitor in Blanchardstown, Dublin, Lynn specialised in litigation and property conveyancing, but quickly developed his business interests. He moved his practice to the Capel Building in the city centre and began to practise as Capel Law while becoming involved in property development by way of Kendar Holdings, which he incorporated in January 2003.

His initial ventures involved apartments in Leitrim and offices in Cavan, but he soon moved overseas, working on a holiday home project in Portugal and property ventures in Hungary, while continuing to run Capel Law.

At the peak of his activities, he was associated with almost 150 properties, a similar number of bank accounts in a number of jurisdictions and assets with a nominal value of €50 million.

According to his testimony in the 2022 trial, he had close relationships with some of the top bankers in the State, including Michael Fingleton of the Irish Nationwide Building Society, and the late Sean FitzPatrick of Anglo Irish Banks.

“They were willing to lend to me,” he said of the banks generally. “Always, always, I had an intention to repay the banks. Without the banks, you are just a person with ideas. Without your name, with the banks, you are just nothing.” He had, he said, been “greedy” and too driven, but he was not a thief.

When his fall came it was rapid, complete and very public. He was on holidays in Portugal with his wife in September 2007, he told the court last year, when the Law Society informed his Dublin practice an inspector had been appointed to investigate it.

Within a month, the High Court froze his bank accounts and the accounts of his legal and property companies after the society had noted an apparent “free flow of funds” between Lynn’s law firm and his property interests.

[ Bank of Ireland worker suggested Michael Lynn should be referred to Law Society in 2004 ]

[ Michael Fingleton’s ‘right hand man’ claims he never met or spoke to Michael Lynn ]

“The entire structure was frozen overnight,” he told the 2022 trial. “I knew at that stage I was finished as a solicitor.”

Immediately the news broke, bankers were on to him, concerned about his ability to repay the debts he owed. Lynn’s liabilities were discovered to be in the region of €80 million, far in excess of the value of his assets. He was struck off the roll of solicitors in 2008.

There then began an international game of cat and mouse as Lynn moved abroad as inquiries in Dublin continued apace. By January 2008, a receiver had sold Glenlion for €4.9 million, slightly less than Lynn and his wife had paid for it two years earlier.

He moved to London, reportedly to avoid the more strict Irish bankruptcy regime then in existence, and then to Portugal in February 2008. Later again, he moved to Brazil, where he had first gone in 2005 because of the “natural business connection between Portugal and Brazil”.

In Brazil, the couple had their first child, a boy. Initially they lived in Sao Paulo, but later moved to Recife, a smaller coastal city where, with investors, Lynn said he became involved in property again. He earned a salary from this and also earned money from teaching English, he said.

When the Irish authorities made a request that Lynn be extradited to face charges here, he resisted in the Brazilian courts, and was held in custody pending the resolution of the issue. While Lynn was in prison in Brazil, the couple had two more children.

In her evidence to last year’s trial, Bríd Murphy, a nurse, told the court Lynn had proposed to her after just three months of meeting. She said she was living with him in Brazil and seven months pregnant with their second child when Lynn was arrested and taken into custody. “For five days I didn’t know if he was dead or alive,” she said.

Lynn told the 2022 trial that prison conditions in Brazil were harsh with a high level of violence. “Brazilian prisons are very difficult for everybody,” he said. “Conjugal visits exist to maintain peace in what is essentially a war zone.”

Lynn was extradited to Ireland in 2018 after spending 4½ years in prison in Brazil and granted bail after an independent surety of €100,000 was put up by his sister-in-law Lilian Lynn. During the 2022 trial, his wife said she and the children were living on social welfare.

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