A High Court judge has said that in two weeks' time he will lift a worldwide order restraining three former directors of a Shannon-based aircraft parts company from dissipating certain monies provided certain conditions are met.
Mr Justice Kearns said that before the injunction could be lifted, a payment of £100,000 must be lodged in court by the defendants, who must also give greater clarity and definition to earlier undertakings tendered to the court.
Aerospares Limited, which ceased trading in February 1998, last month obtained an injunction against three former directors and against two companies restraining them from disposing of or dissipating any monies received from Nigeria Airways Ltd and Turkmenistan Airlines Air Company.
The order also restrains the defendants from disposing of their assets save in so far as they exceed the sum of £500,000.
The injunction is binding on three former directors of Aerospares Limited - Mr Noel Thompson, Mr Kieran Dolphin, Mr Martin Anthony Fizgerald - and on two companies, Aviation Display Limited, of which all three are directors, and Aerospares Limited (the same name as the Shannon-based company) which was established in the Seychelles in April 1997.
Judge Kearns said Mr Thompson, the former sales and operations director with the Shannon company, had resigned in November 1997 against a background where the company, because of difficulties associated with the Gulf situation, had run into serious financial difficulties.
Mr Dolphin resigned his directorship of the Shannon company in February 1998, and Mr Fitzgerald, sales manager for the Middle East and African markets, also resigned the same month.
The Shannon company had alleged its three former directors perpetrated a fraud on it by causing monies properly due to it from its customers and trading connections to be channelled to Aviation Display Limited using an account at a branch of Barclays Bank in London in the name of Aerospares Limited which was incorporated in the Seychelles but had exactly the same name as the Shannon-based company.
It might be that the three former directors felt they had to act swiftly to get off what they perceived as a sinking ship, the judge said. But, if this was their agreed course of action, the evidence presently available to the court indicated to him that they chose very underhand means of realising that goal.
It was his belief, based on the evidence at this stage only, that the three men behaved dishonestly, both in re-routing certain payments destined for Aerospares Limited in Shannon and in holding themselves out as working for that company while in fact operating their own account.
The three men and Aviation Display Limited have already undertaken to lodge £100,000 in court to meet any possible judgment which may be awarded against them.