Receiver to finish Dunloe bidder's development

A major apartment and retail development in Poole, Dorset, England, run by companies that are in turn owned by the Jersey-based Orb group, is being completed by a receiver.

The Orb group made a bid for Dunloe Ewart at the time Mr Noel Smyth was seeking to take it private.

Two years ago, a member of the group, Orb Securities, bought the UK transport group, Seafield, which was then quoted on the Dublin and London exchanges.

A former Dublin accountant now living in Jersey, Mr Sam Nolan (49), who is associated with the Orb group, was behind the Dunloe Ewart bid.

He is a director and shareholder in Lynch Talbot, a Jersey venture capital company that took over the Orb group a few years ago.

Mr Nolan had earlier come to prominence when he was named as a key potential witness in the MMI Stockbrokers case.

The liquidator to MMI, Mr Tom Kavanagh took a fraud case against seven former directors but the case collapsed when Mr Nolan said he would not travel to Dublin to give evidence.

Mr Nolan was linked to transactions involving MMI and the Abbey National subsidiary, Cater Allen Nominees, which had dealings with MMI.

Mr Barry Gilbertson, a partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers in London, has been appointed a receiver to Poole Developments and Dolphin Quay Developments in the UK. He and two partners are now trying to complete a development in Poole which has been part completed by these companies.

The development involves 105 apartments and 70,000 square feet of retail space.

The majority of the apartments have been bought off the plans by purchasers who paid deposits of 10 per cent. The total involved was £2 million sterling. Mr Gilbertson said it seemed that this money had been used by the companies as cashflow. He and his colleagues now intend completing the development using loans from the banks.

He said the developers may have walked away from the project when they concluded there was little profit left in it. He said there was no evidence any money had been "siphoned" out of the companies.

Local people are calling for an inquiry into how councillors at Poole dealt with the Orb group. The group bought Poole Pottery, which at the time was located on the site where the apartment and retail development is now being built. The pottery company, which was bought by Orb, is also in financial difficulties.

The developments at Poole are the latest in a series of controversies to hit Orb. The Serious Fraud Office in London is conducting an inquiry into what happened to £33 million sterling which belonged to a former technology company, Izodia, in which Orb had a 29 per cent stake.

Raids were carried out in the UK and Jersey as part of this ongoing inquiry and The Royal Court of Jersey has sought information from Orb about the affair.

Orb has also been involved with the Thistle hotel group in the UK, which it recently sold.

The main figures behind the Orb group are understood to be Mr Nolan, Mr Gerald Smith, also of Jersey, and Mr Salahi Ozturk, from Turkey. They are the main shareholders in Lynch Talbot which in turn is said to manage funds for a number of unnamed high net worth individuals.

Mr Smith is a former GP who was jailed for two years in 1993 in relation to £2 million sterling which went missing from a pension fund associated with a construction firm that he had been trying to prop up.

Mr Nolan, a former accountant with Coopers & Lybrand in Dublin, has served as a director of a number of Irish companies .