THE NATIONAL Asset Management Agency (Nama) is investigating the connections of one of its loan portfolio managers with a property development firm where he worked which has had loans transferred to the State agency.

Colm Lundy, one of 80 portfolio managers at Nama, worked for Dublin firm Newlyn Developments during the peak years of the property boom from 2004 until 2007.

Company records show Newlyn gave a legal pledge to National Asset Loan Management, a subsidiary of Nama, in June 2011 as security for loans at the agency.

Nama, which employs almost 200 staff, is examining whether Mr Lundy has any personal exposure to Newlyn’s debts or connected borrowings and, if so, whether this has been disclosed to the agency.

Mr Lundy continues to work with Nama. Repeated efforts to contact him seeking a comment were unsuccessful.

A Nama spokesman said it did not comment on employees.

The agency said that each staff member had to comply with codes of practice and procedures to comply with the National Asset Management Agency Act 2009.

“In addition, everyone working in Nama is obliged to make full disclosure of relevant interests and financial obligations,” the agency said in response to queries.

“Nama has strict protocols and rules in place to guard against any conflict of interest involving people working in Nama, which include the provision of full, relevant information and disclosure.”

The agency said that a formal investigation would be instigated “in any case in which someone working in Nama is suspected of having neglected to make full disclosure or of having breached those rules or supplied incomplete or inaccurate information”.

The agency added that “in any such case Nama would not hesitate to take any appropriate action to protect the work and the reputation of Nama, while at all times following due process”.

Mr Lundy took an unsuccessful unfair dismissal challenge against Newlyn in 2008. The Employment Appeals Tribunal said that he was hired “for the specific purposes of site acquisition and development”.

The tribunal heard evidence from Newlyn managing director Robert Kehoe that the firm “had a problem with a site” jointly owned by Mr Lundy with the company’s shareholders, Mr Kehoe, Christy Dowling and George McGarry.

Mr Lundy who was paid €220,000 a year with bonuses, claimed to be a director of the company and that he was entitled to a share of the company’s profits.

In a separate action taken in the High Court in 2007, he claimed to be owed €8 million on foot of a profit-sharing agreement signed when he joined Newlyn in 2004.

Newlyn had bank loans of €22 million and retained losses of €13 million in July 2010, according to its most recently filed accounts.