Dublin office linked to EU inquiries

No 19 Ely Place is a fine business address, a handsome Georgian building just off St Stephen's Green. Yet knock on the door and the sound echoes through the largely empty house. Downstairs, a receptionist in a bleak office fends off all inquiries.

Upstairs, she says, someone represents the interests of a Luxembourg business consultant, Mr Philipe de Patoul, but only to the extent of passing on messages. Mr de Patoul, now based in Luxembourg, would ring back. He didn't.

19 Ely Place is home to 149 companies, mostly of the offshore variety. One of those established here, Off-shore Ecologies, now delisted, is the matter of a file currently subject to Luxembourg police inquiries. And, although his name appears in it, the Commission President, Mr Jacques Santer, denies any involvement.

Mr de Patoul specialises in the perfectly legal activity of establishing and providing company secretarial services to those who prefer to register their businesses as Irish offshore companies and often to cloak themselves in the anonymity provided by nominee directors. There is no suggestion that Mr de Patoul or his staff are involved in any form of illegal activity.

Among Mr de Patoul's clients, however, there are a few who skate close to the legal wind. Two of the companies which he established in Dublin for a Luxembourg client are now subject to major fraud inquiries. Acadian International Ltd and Software Systems Services Ltd, both now struck off the register, have been cited by the European Commission's anti-fraud unit, UCLAF, as being involved in defrauding the EU's humanitarian office, ECHO.

A Commission official who dealt with the two companies, Mr Hubert Odini, has been suspended, while the Luxembourg judicial authorities also consider legal action against Mr Claude Perry, the director of the company, Perry Lux, which owned them.

In a separate development, a file on Off-shore Ecologies, a Dublin-registered, non-resident company, was passed to a Belgian journalist from Le Soir, who sought the assistance of The Irish Times in tracing the firm's directors.

A draft prospectus for the company, to be established with a share capital of £12 million, described it as a specialist consultancy in decommissioning oil rigs and suggested that the president of the company board would be Mr Jacques Santer, with his son, Mr Patrick Santer, as company legal adviser.

Those behind the project included Mr Camille Van de Velde, Mr Edmond Nerincx, Mr Jean Paul Merckx, Mr Ulf Martinson and Mr Sergio Farranzi, a known associate of Mr Santer. The first four have all been involved in controversial business dealings in Belgium which have been the subject of police inquiries.

Strangely, it seemed, the company also shared directors with Perry Lux subsidiaries, a Mr Michael Morrice, a London accountant who is director of some 99 listed companies, including Acadian and Software, and a Ms Christina Mayor Mayor, from Madrid, also a director of several companies. Neither of the Santers nor any of the project team was listed as directors.

Is there any significance to the overlap in directors between the companies suspected of being involved in fraud and Offshore Ecologies? Sources in Dublin close to Mr de Patoul insist very convincingly that the nominee directors are entirely unrelated to the businesses concerned.

Did Mr Santer have any involvement in the establishment of the company or make any promises to the founders?

Mr Van de Velde says no, but still hopes that the company can be relisted when Mr Santer leaves office next year.

Mr Santer insists that neither he nor his son was aware of or involved in the project and also denies any impropriety.

- Additional research by Eibhir Mulqueen