Wife still in touch with missing solicitor, court told

THE WIFE of missing solicitor Michael Lynn has told the High Court she remains in touch with her husband and last saw him just over a week ago in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia.

Bríd Murphy said she knows where her husband is, that he had collected her at the airport in Sofia from where she left on Monday week last and that he went to Portugal the following day. She remains married to Mr Lynn, she added.

Ms Murphy became upset at stages during her evidence and at one point during cross-examination asked counsel for ACC Bank to understand she was not used to such surroundings.

In proceedings which opened yesterday - aimed at establishing entitlement to the €4.7 million proceeds of the sale last January of Glenlion House, Howth, the subject of alleged multiple mortgages by Mr Lynn - Ms Justice Mary Finlay Geoghegan has been asked to first determine Ms Murphy's claim that she is entitled to a 50 per cent interest in the house.

Glenlion House was sold at auction for €4.9 million last January to meet some of Mr Lynn's estimated €80 million debts. He was struck off the roll of solicitors by court order last week and was also fined €2 million.

Ms Murphy and a number of banks have made claims over the proceeds of sale of Glenlion, which amount to some €4.7 million after the estimated €200,000 costs of sale are deducted. The house was purchased by Mr Lynn and Ms Murphy for €5.5 million in spring 2007.

Ms Murphy denies she has any liability for multimillion euro loans given by ACC Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society for the Glenlion purchase as she says she was unaware of such loans until last autumn, when matters concerning her husband's practice were exposed. She accepts an indebtedness to Bank of Scotland, her counsel James Dwyer SC said.

ACC Bank secured judgment for €3.76 million against Mr Lynn last November concerning loans on the property and claims it has a first legal mortgage over the property, giving it priority over claims by Irish Nationwide Building Society and Bank of Scotland Ireland.

Ms Murphy told the court that when she married her husband in April 2006 he was a solicitor with his own practice and property company and she trusted him completely in relation to financial affairs, including dealings for the purchase of Glenlion. She had worked as a nurse earning some €46,000 a year before their marriage but gave up work in early 2006. She had left all financial dealings about Glenlion to her husband and was more concerned at the time of those dealings with health problems, she said. During a medical examination in February 2007 for life assurance connected with the Glenlion purchase, a lump was discovered in her breast and she had had to undergo a biopsy and tests which ultimately produced good results.

She said she had no involvement with her husband's solicitor or property business and had never been involved in any property transaction prior to Glenlion.

She said that she was staying with family and friends and "bits and pieces of me are everywhere".

Ms Murphy is claiming that several signatures purporting to be hers on a number of documents related to securing finance for that purchase from ACC Bank were forged. She claims she believed at the time the only loan on the house was one with Bank of Scotland Ireland and says she did sign a loan offer document from that bank related to Glenlion.

The court heard that a documents expert has produced a report stating that certain signatures on loan documents relating to Glenlion which purport to be Ms Murphy's are not her signatures.

Also yesterday, Fiona McAleenan, who was employed as a solicitor in Mr Lynn's practice from late 2004 to September 2007, said she was "led to believe" that Ms Murphy had signed an ACC Bank mortgage document in connection with the Glenlion property in the presence of a witnessing solicitor.

Ms McAleenan said that some documents related to the Glenlion purchase, which stated they had been signed "in the presence" of Ms McAleenan, were not signed by her.

Moreover the purported signature was not her handwriting. She said one document stated the name of a firm as Fiona McAleenan & Co solicitors but there was no such firm.