THE wife of the jailed solicitor Elio Malocco has been ordered by a court to repay almost £15,000 which her husband borrowed after the collapse of his legal firm six years ago. Ms Jane de Valera was ordered by Judge Anthony Kennedy in the Dublin Circuit Civil Court yesterday to repay the loan, which was borrowed from a property consultant.
Ms de Valera told the judge she had never received a penny of the money, which, she said, Mr James Walsh had agreed to lend Malocco in tranches of between £3,000 and £5 000.
Ms de Valera, now of Charton, Kerrymount Avenue, Foxrock, Co Dublin, denied she ever undertook to repay the money from the proceeds of the sale of the Malocco home - Wincanton, Foxrock - which was in her sole name.
She told her counsel, Mr Eamon Marray, that her parents were paying her grocery bills when she scraped together a number of JWT travel vouchers to pay her fare to New York to give Malocco a package from Mr Walsh which contained an estimated £3,000 in cash.
On another occasion she lodged a £4,000 cheque made out to her from Mr Walsh in the National Irish Bank and told the bank to make out a banker's draft for £3,800 in favour of the wife of one of Malocco's solicitors. Ms de Valera denied she had asked Mr Walsh for $5,000 and £4,500 to be wired to her husband in New York, or that she ever renewed an alleged promise to repay Mr Walsh from the proceeds of the house auction.
Mr Walsh told his counsel Mr Gerry Ryan, he had agreed to lend Malocco money only on the basis that his wife undertook to repay him from the proceeds of Wincanton. Ms de Valera had given him that assurance on several occasions prior to the hand-over or transfer of money.
Malocco, released from prison to give evidence, said he remembered a meeting in his home at which his wife had undertaken to repay Mr Walsh out of the proceeds of Wincanton. At the time they did not even have money for food because all his bank accounts and assets were frozen by the High Court and he had no job or income.
Judge Kennedy said that while he sympathised with Ms de Valera he felt Mr Walsh, who was already owed £30,000 by Malocco, would not have forwarded the money without such an undertaking from her. Judge Kennedy was told the proceeds from the sale of Wincanton were still frozen by the courts.