Nama deal: Tughans rejects claims by former managing partner

The Belfast law firm Tughans has rejected claims by Ian Coulter, its former managing partner, concerning a bank account which contained £7.5 million and which has been the subject of allegations relating to the purchase of Nama's former portfolio in the North.

Tughans today said it disputed Mr Coulter’s assertions that he personally informed the law firm about the account and voluntarily transferred the money from the account to the firm last December.

Instead the Belfast firm said: “Tughans strongly disagrees with Ian Coulter’s version of events surrounding the treatment, discovery and retrieval of the professional fees and his exit from the practice and it has passed all documentation relating to this to the Law Society.

“Tughans voluntarily brought the matter to the attention of the Law Society and will continue to co-operate with any inquiry.”

Both Mr Coulter and Tughans have been in the spotlight because of the role they played in the purchase, by the American firm Cerberus, of Nama's former Northern Ireland loans portfolio for an estimated £1.2 billion.

The Independent TD Mick Wallace had alleged in the Dail earlier this month that £7 million had been lodged in an offshore bank account from the Nama transaction with Cerberus and that this money had been earmarked for a Northern Ireland politician or a certain party.

Speaking for the first time today since the allegations were made Mr Coulter denied that any politician in the North or any of their relatives was “ever to receive any monies” from the Nama transaction.

Mr Coulter said he had been engaged through Tughans to provide the "required local counsel" to the American law firm Brown Rudnick that had been retained by Cerberus on the Nama deal.

He says the £7.5 million in question was “part of the total legal and consultancy fees agreed as payable by Cerberus to Brown Rudnick”.

“No politician, nor any relative of any politician in Northern Ireland, was ever to receive any monies in any way as part of this deal. This was never discussed, assumed nor expected.”

He has claimed that these fees were “paid into a Tughans company account supervised by the firm’s Finance team”.

Mr Coulter added: “In September 2014, a portion of the fees was retained by Tughans and I instructed Tughans’ finance director to transfer the remaining portion into an external account which was controlled only by me. Not a penny of this money was touched.

“The reason for the transfer is a complex, commercially- and legally-sensitive issue and has been explained to my former partners at Tughans. It will be explained to the appropriate authorities and those entitled to that information as part of my continuing co-operation with any investigation”.

He claims the money was subsequently not “discovered” or “retrieved” by the Law Society or Tughans.

“In fact, I transferred the money back to Tughans in early December 2014 and I brought this to their attention,” Mr Coulter states.