Mick Wallace has said he does not know who owns the three wine bars he built and formerly ran, with the MEP saying his involvement with the company that operates the businesses is limited to a consulting role for which he receives €53 a week before tax. He said he receives the sum for “advice and stuff”, including using his contacts with wine producers in Italy to source produce.
In an interview with South East Radio’s Morning Mix, to be broadcast on Monday morning, Mr Wallace suggested he is still personally connected with those who hold the leases on the businesses but said the buildings were sold by a financial institution to unknown investors when he ran into financial difficulties.
Two of the restaurants are in the Italian Quarter on the quays in Dublin 1, while the third is beside Croke Park on Russell Street, Dublin 1. Wallace also previously owned a vineyard in Piedmont in Italy but sold it in 2009 to his brother, Joseph, at a time when he was engaged with Revenue regarding the under-declaration of VAT.
Last week it emerged in a video circulated by Alessandro Panza of Italy’s right-wing Lega party, recorded at the start of the month, that Wallace had said he still owned the three businesses, which serve Italian food and wine. But in an interview to be broadcast on Monday, the MEP said he did not know the identities of the investors who purchased the buildings in which the wine bars are located.
“I built them and I put my heart and soul into them but they are owned by investors now,” he said. “I don’t own them. I don’t have any shareholding in the lease. I always felt they were sort of mine but it’s inaccurate for me to say I own three wine bars because I don’t.”
He added: “I shouldn’t say I owned them even though I always feel I sort of did. But they are actually owned by investors.”
Asked the identity of these investors, he said he does not know. “I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t know who owns them because the banks sold them to investors. So, they’re all owned by investors, the three bars are all owned by different investors. And on my heart, I don’t know their names. And I actually haven’t met any of them.”
Asked to the explain the wider history of his involvement with the business, Mr Wallace said he opened the first of the wine bars in 2003 and that the company, Wallace Calcio, managed what became a chain of three.
“They were doing very well. It was a decent business. But obviously all the value was in the buildings, they were great locations and it was very good.
“But I lost the buildings after the banking crisis and all I was left with was the lease and I had the lease until I was made bankrupt in 2016. I stopped owning the bars shortly after the banking crisis, that’s more than 10 years ago. But I still had the lease until I was made bankrupt, which I think was around 2016.
“So there were different people then, I mean they’re all friends of mine, who’ve had it. Three of the lads, who are Italians, they are getting a good wage out of it but they’ve never got a dividend out of it.”
Company filings for 2017 to 2018 showed the ownership was split between Mr Wallace’s niece, former partner, and three Italians.
After questions were raised in the wake of the MEP claiming to own the businesses in a video circulated on social media video, Mr Wallace revised an entry regarding his financial interests on the official register of the European Parliament. In it, he said he earned between €1 and €499 per month as an adviser to Wallace Calcio Ltd.
Mr Wallace acknowledges the failure to record the income was “a mistake on my part”.
“I shouldn’t make a mistake like that. I should be more careful. There’s no doubt about it but public representatives should adhere to the requirements and I didn’t do that but the minute I found out that it was an oversight of mine, I rectified it there last week. As soon as I found out that I wasn’t compliant with the rules I dealt with it.
“Of course I was wrong in that I didn’t put it up on the parliament register and that was a mistake on my part, I should have been more careful.”
He says, however, that he receives just €53 per week for this work before tax.
“I give the lads advice and stuff,” he says. “I’ve contacts with wine producers in Italy. I’ve kept my link with the bar but I don’t own any of it. In August 2019, just after I got elected to Europe, they started giving me a small sum for a little bit of work I was doing on it but literally over the last three and a half years it has amounted to an average of €53 euros a week before tax and I pay 40 per cent tax on it. For the media to go into a tailspin over this ... it’s a bit strange.
Mr Wallace said he wished the media “put more energy into real journalism”.
“I hear so few journalists challenging the warmongering narrative at the moment. There are terrible things happening in Ukraine, so many innocent Ukrainians dying, and we have Europeans promoting the war, politicians across Europe promoting it, looking to send more and more arms in. It’s a pity the media wouldn’t cover that more,” he said.
