Taoiseach Micheál Martin is set to receive within the next 10 days the long-delayed Commission of Investigation report on the contentious sale of Siteserv to businessman Denis O’Brien, as none of the parties referred to in a draft document exercised their right to challenge its contents through the High Court.
The 12th interim report on the state of the now seven-year investigation, led by Mr Justice Brian Cregan, said the Taoiseach was expected to get the report by August 8th. The commission confirmed that no party had made an application to the High Court by the July 8th deadline it set, after distributing the draft report in May.
A number of parties, however, made submissions to the commission on the draft report, which are currently being reviewed.
“Once its final report on the Siteserv transaction has been completed, the commission will write to the witnesses before it, requesting them to furnish their applications for recovery of their legal costs, in accordance with the applicable guidelines,” the report said.
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“The commission will then need to consider these applications. The commission expects that this process will take approximately eight weeks.”
Mr Justice Cregan was appointed in 2015 as the sole member of a commission of investigation into transactions, including the Siteserv deal, involving State-owned Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC), formerly Anglo Irish Bank.
O’Brien’s company
The terms of the commission were changed a year later to focus initially on the Siteserv sale to Mr O’Brien’s company, Millington, for €45.5 million, in a deal where the IBRC wrote off €119 million of the then-ailing building services company’s €150 million of debts.
The Irish Times reported last September that initial draft conclusions criticised the manner in which the sale was conducted and that €8 million more could have been realised for the State from the sale. The Government expects the final cost of the commission could exceed €30 million.
The draft final report, reported on by The Irish Times in May, found that the Siteserv sale was based on “misleading and incomplete information” that the building services company provided to the former Anglo Irish Bank.
The judge criticised large bonus payments to certain Siteserv directors on the eve of the sale, saying they received more than corporate finance advisers KPMG and Davy. He also said a €5 million payment to Siteserv shareholders as part of the deal “was too high”.
Bonuses cost the company €802,200, the judge said, noting KPMG received €450,000 and Davy €275,000.
“In the context of Siteserv, these were bonuses on a lavish scale and entirely unacceptable for a company that was costing the taxpayer almost €118 million in loan write-offs and losses,” he said.
The commission has not yet commented on the contents of the report.
The latest interim report from the commission said it would prepare a report by the end of October setting out its recommendations on the investigation of the other 37 transactions it was currently required to look into.
