Vivier chugs along

Vivier Mortgages, a subprime lender formerly known as the Home Funding Corporation (HFC), is another interesting company whose accounts for last year have just become available at the CRO.

Its profits only nudged up by €60,000, but the accounts show it is still owed €7.4 million and that it has been prominent in the courts this year chasing debts.

Vivier, which is owned by a Kiwi-Italian financier Luigi Wewege, was the subject of certain allegations this year in a hard-hitting RTÉ Prime Time investigation into high-interest home loans.

Wewege and Vivier filed a defamation suit in February about the programme against RTÉ and its reporter Conor Ryan, but court records show the case has yet to be progressed.

HFC was bought during 2014 by Wewege and renamed Vivier. The businessman, who was once a well-known political adviser in New Zealand, also owns Vivier & Co, a financial company registered there.

During the summer the Kiwi financial regulator deregistered Vivier after a member of the public passed on a web article about the RTÉ investigation.

Wewege, who has always strongly denied any wrongdoing, recently won an appeal against the regulator, however, because it didn’t tell him about the article that was passed on.