An order restraining a peat company from disposing of its assets below £1.8 million was issued by the High Court yesterday. Anglo Irish Bank Corporation plc and Mr Paul T Shelly, receiver over assets charged by a mortgage deed entered between the bank and Hunt Peat Limited (HPL), were granted the order against HPL after the court was told the current amount of loans outstanding by the company to the bank is £1,836,759, including interest.

The plaintiffs also secured an injunction restraining HPL, its servants or agents, or others aware of the order including the defendant's solicitor, Mr Dermot H Sheridan of DH Sheridan & Company, Solicitors, Chapel Street, Sligo, from dealing in any way with the sum of £65,000 sterling said to have been received by the solicitors to the account of HPL on May 21st last.

Applying for the orders, Mr Michael Collins SC, for the plaintiffs, said Anglo Irish had been banker to HPL for some years. He said the directors of HPL included Mr Gerald Frances Hunt and Mr Gearoid Joseph Hunt, with an address at Milltown, Castleplunkett, Castlerea, Co Roscommon. Both men were undischarged bankrupts, he said.

In 1993 the bank had agreed to provide a credit facility to help HPL, and its Bahamian company of the same name, obtain a loan facility from a Bahamas-based bank, Sofitel Capital Corporation (Bahamas) Limited.

Later in 1993 the bank and Sofitel agreed Anglo Irish would provide five bills of exchange instead of five letters of credit. In consideration of the arrangement of this facility, HPL agreed to execute a first fixed charge over a large tract of bogland in which it had a long leasehold interest.

The property in question was located in Co Westmeath and HPL held it under long lease from Westmeath Peat Limited from 1989.

Mr Collins said HPL had failed to create or execute the fixed charge which it had agreed to execute over the property. Proceedings were issued and a consent order was made by way of settlement.

Anglo Irish reorganised the facilities it was prepared to make available to HPL and sent a loan facility letter to the company in August 1995 in which it agreed to advance to HPL a sum of more than £2.3 million plus £50,000 to cover the cost of maturing the bills of exchange and the repayment of a sum of £50,000 to National Irish Bank Limited. Those monies were repayable together with interest to Anglo Irish.

In an affidavit, Mr Peter Butler, a director of Anglo Irish, said most of the monies were advanced to HPL and in January, 1996, HPL executed a deed of charge in favour of the bank in respect of its leasehold interest in the bogland property and this was later registered. The balance of the monies had since been drawn down. He said the loan facility required HPL to make certain repayments, including interest repayments. The current amount of the loans outstanding was £1,836,759, including interest. Interest of £105,206 was due and owing as of yesterday but the defendant had failed to pay the sums due or any part of them.

It was his belief the only fixed asset belonging to HPL within this jurisdiction was the bogland property. However, that property had been sublet to Edham Ltd, with a registered office in Belfast, and he believed it yielded a combined rent of £65,000 per year. Mr Butler said the bank had called on HPL and Edham to pay the amount of £65,000 to the bank but this had not happened. He believed the sum of £65,000 was transferred by Edham to the client account of DH Sheridan & Company, solicitors for HPL, at Ulster Bank, Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh. Mr Butler said he feared if the monies in question were not protected by court order, they would be dissipated in a wrongful and improper manner by the defendant or its officers.

Mr Justice O'Sullivan granted the injunctions and made them returnable for June 15th next.