Company director and wife must repay €111,000 loaned for golf lodge fit-out

A company director and his wife must repay a finance company more than €111,000 that was loaned for the purpose of fitting out lodges at a golf course, as the fit-out never took place, the High Court has ruled.

Paul Browne, managing director of Browne Corporate Finance, and his wife, Bairbre Wall, an interior designer, must pay the money to Vanguard Auto Finance, to which Lombard Ireland had assigned the lease for the fit-out loan, Mr Justice Bernard Barton said.

The court heard that a fake invoice was supplied to Lombard for fit-out materials for some of the tax-designated lodges at Kilkea Golf Club, Kilkea, Co Kildare. They were built by a company, Arnosford, since gone into receivership, which leased the lodges to golfing clients.

Mr Browne’s company, which is in liquidation with no assets, was project manager of the development. Mr Browne provided instructions to his wife for interior design of the lodges. She received a €2,000 fee for each fit-out.

The €111,329 cheque for the loan for the fit-out was sent to Ms Wall, who was instructed by her husband to transfer it to Browne Corporate Finance for project management fees due to it from the developer Arnosford, Mr Justice Barton said.

At the time of the negotiation of the loan cheque, Ms Wall had not received any instruction to buy or supply goods listed on invoices for the fit-out. “The invoices were a fiction”, the judge said.

After Arnosford went into receivership in 2009, the bank inspected the lodges for which the money had been loaned and found no fit-outs had taken place; nor had any goods been supplied, the judge said.

Vanguard Auto Finance said it was entitled to recover the loan from Mr Browne and his wife because of a transaction that was the result of deceit and/or misrepresentation. Mr Browne and Ms Wall both claimed they were innocent parties in the transaction and had received no financial benefit.

Mr Justice Barton found that the couple knew the purpose of the payment at the time. Using the monies to satisfy a debt owed by Arnosford “amounted to a wrong” against the finance company, for which both are personally liable, he ruled.

He was satisfied that the couple had disposed of the money at a time when both were aware of its purpose, and this constituted unjust enrichment.