Homeland holds bitter feelings

Jim Stanley's offices on Petrovka street in central Moscow are about 10 minutes walk from Red Square. The famous Bolshoi Theatre is almost visible from the door of his building.

During Soviet times the building was a base for one of the economic ministries and a plaque announcing this is still in place to one side of the entrance. However, these days the shabby state of repair of the former ministry is evident the moment you walk in the door.

The building is served by a small, worn lift. The stone stairs are bare and the walls are in need of fresh paint. Mr Stanley has an office on the second floor, a small room off a corridor lined with heavy padded doors. The windows look out the back of the building, onto back yards and old unplastered brick walls. The office has a desk, some chairs, a telephone and fax. Little or no effort has been made to make it attractive.

Despite serious health problems a few years ago, Mr Stanley (59) looks fit and well. He says he is busy pursuing a number of business deals in Russia, but does not want to elaborate. It is understood he is still involved in the resources industry. His son, Brendan, is also living in Moscow and pursuing business interests in Russia.

"I like it here and I like the people," Mr Stanley says of Moscow. He has an apartment not too far from the centre which, he says, is not bad by Moscow standards "which are poor". He says the Bula controversy, the MacCann report, and the fact that many of his former friends and colleagues believe the worst of him, have soured his feelings for Ireland. He has not been back for about a year.

His business interests involve a lot of travel and he talks enthusiastically of the beauty of certain parts of Eastern Siberia and of Central Asia. He is on a macrobiotic diet but does not find it difficult keeping to this in Russia. "You can get the most wonderful vegetables and fruit here, some of which you'd never see in the West."

Bula is seeking damages against him as a result of the Mir Oil/Bula fiasco. The company has a worldwide order prohibiting him from disposing of his assets which include Brownsbarn House, Thomastown, Co Kilkenny. "That house genuinely belongs to my former partner, Mary Kieran," he says. The house was bought nine years ago by a Jersey company, River Properties Ltd.

Mr Stanley says that since his resignation from Bula in April of last year, he has disposed of a house he owned on a Swedish island in Gaellnoeby, near Stockholm. He said that when the mortgage was paid off, he was left with about £100,000. He has also sold shares in Bula and Ovoca, worth about £112,000. He still holds Bula shares worth £50,000.

Mr Stanley also holds shares in Ovoca Resources and Gaelic Resources. His total Irish shareholdings were valued at £227,209 by Bula in September of this year.

The Ovoca shareholding, of between 1 1/2 and two million shares, has increased in value significantly in the past week. This week the shares are worth about 30p, valuing Mr Stanley's Ovoca shareholding at about £500,000. The worldwide order obtained by Bula prohibits him selling any of his shares.

He says he has no substantial assets other than those which have already been mentioned in the public domain.

Mr Stanley is a chartered management accountant. He qualified privately, then moved to South Africa where he began to work with the Anglo American Corporation. He was promoted "fairly rapidly" and became chief financial officer of the corporation's central African operations, based in Lusaka, Zambia. He was offered a further promotion which would have involved a move to South Africa, but he did not want to bring up his children there.

"I came back to Ireland. I got a job as the deputy chief executive of CIE, and I worked with CIE for two or three years. That was the early 1980s."

After leaving CIE he acted as a consultant to Bula Mines during its negotiations with the government. As part of the deal an exploration licence for part of the Porcupine field off the west coast was given to Bula. This led to the creation of Bula Resources. He says he has always worked hard for Bula and tried to do his best for the shareholders. "To hear what the shareholders are saying about me is the hardest thing of all," he says.