James Stanley (58) is a former chief financial executive with Nchanga Consolidated Copper Mines Ltd, Zambia, where he lived from 1965 to 1973. He also served as an executive director of CIE. He became an executive director of Bula Resources when it was established in 1981.

When in Ireland, Mr Stanley lived in a large £1 million home on the banks of the Nore, Brownsbarn House, near Thomastown, Co Kilkenny. A worker at the house told The Irish Times that Mr Stanley no longer lived there.

In London, Mr Stanley kept an apartment on Grosvenor Square. A woman there said he moved out in mid-September. Messages for Mr Stanley can be left at an office in Moscow, according to Bula RussianEnglish translator Elena Loven. Ms Loven would not disclose the address but said she would leave a message there for Mr Stanley, asking him to contact The Irish Times. He has not yet done so. Ms Loven said he is travelling a lot, doing business for himself in Russia.

Another known address for Mr Stanley is on Blenheim Avenue, Jersey. When the Russian directors, Alexandr Marichev and Tatyana Kirillova, were still on the board of Bula they hired a private detective, Mr Ian Withers, of Priority Investigations, Dublin, to enquire into the ownership of Mir Oil.

Mr Withers established that when Mir was set up on the Virgin Islands, the order and payment came from Ms Susan Neil of Chamonix. He then checked out Ms Neil and established her home address on Jersey. He noticed that this address, on Blenheim Avenue, was the same as that given some years earlier by Mr Stanley when registering 10 million Bula shares he owns.

She told The Irish Times: "Many years ago, Mr Jim Stanley must have been between addresses, and he asked could he use my home address. I said `yes', and he's never changed it. That's all that's to it. I'm telling you here and now, Jim Stanley never set foot inside my house."

She said Mr Stanley was not a director of Mir Oil or Mir Space, but that she could not say who was.

An Interim Report sent by the Stock Exchange to the Minister for Enterprise and Employment, Ms Harney, a number of weeks ago, does not state, or directly suggest, who is the owner of the Mir companies. Ms Harney has now appointed an inspector, barrister Lydon McCann, who is to attempt to establish who is the beneficial owner of the Mir companies.

It is known that in the past two months Jim Stanley has twice visited Moscow. He stayed at the Metropole Hotel and the Tveskaya Hotel. While staying at the Metropole he gave his address as Maryland House, Dublin, the headquarters of Bula.