Wexford accountant Alan Hynes yesterday blamed his difficulties on a former investor who, he says, has "spun an absolute yarn" about the property schemes he promoted.
Mr Hynes (45) began giving evidence yesterday to a Chartered Accountants Regulatory Board tribunal, on the seventh day of a resumed hearing.
The tribunal is investigating complaints against Mr Hynes by a number of investors, many of them people who lost substantial sums after they invested in Tuskar Asset Management plc and other property ventures associated with the accountant.
Mr Hynes said he had always been "straightforward, upfront and professional" with his clients. He said complainant John Power, of Power Life and Pensions, Crossabeg, Co Wexford, a former investor, had spun "an absolute yarn all the way through this".
Earlier Ambrose O’Brien, of Kilcloon, Co Meath, said he invested €1.1 million with Mr Hynes and ended up a bankrupt due to bank debts of €17 million he accrued as a result.
However Mr Hynes said it was only when Mr O’Brien met with Mr Power “that things became septic” and that if Mr O’Brien had stayed with him he would not be a bankrupt now. “That’s how I felt about it.”
'Calculating'
He said there was "a calculating mind behind all of this" and that Mr Power had launched a personal attack on him because Mr Power "was upset about not been granted a €100,000 salary" when he was involved with the Tuskar project.
Mr Hynes was questioned about a project in Maynooth, into which Mr O’Brien and others put €1.2 million, but for which planning permission was refused. The property was sold two years later, in 2006, and Mr Hynes was asked what had happened to the profits.
He said the original investments were converted into shares in Tuskar Asset Management, as well as the investors being made creditors of the plc for the profits they were owed from the deal.
However much of the profit, €1.4 million, was put towards an option on the purchase the Riverbank House Hotel in Wexford, a deal which never went ahead. As a result the money was forfeited to the owner of the hotel, Michael Tierney.
At one stage tribunal member Margaret Elliot asked Mr Hynes where the letter was that set out for the investors in the Maynooth deal what had happened with the proceeds. "You are a professional person, not a dope."
Mr Hynes continues his evidence today.
