Musician Jim Corr has told the High Court he was "in dire straits" trying to protect the interests of himself and his family when he sold a mortgage-free Dublin 4 apartment for €350,000 shortly after ACC Bank got a court judgment against him for €1.4 million.
Under intense questioning by counsel for ACC, Mr Corr said he was “trying to protect what I could” once the bank secured judgment arising from an unpaid loan for 94 acres in Goresbridge, Kilkenny.
“I was trying to protect my finances as best I could on behalf of my son because I recognised I was in dire straits.”
Bernard Dunleavy, for ACC, asked whether the sale of the apartment at Donnybrook Castle a month after the February 2011 judgment, having been on the market since 2008, was a coincidence or "deliberate effort" to make sure the bank did not get possession of it.
Mr Dunleavy suggested there was an “extraordinary” sequence of events in which the apartment was bought by a Malta-based entity, I and E Properties, which had no turnover that year but paid €350,000 for the apartment.
I and E was fronted by Mike Young, an associate of solicitor Mortimer Walters, founder of Mr Corr's former solicitors, Adams, who had also acted for I and E in the purchase, counsel said.
Mr Young was an associate of a German national, Florian Karrer, who around this time bought another apartment from Mr Corr at Sharman, Old Windmill Road, Bangor, Co Down, for £295,000 and allowed Mr Corr to live in it rent free for three years, he added.
Mr Karrer, also a business partner with Mr Walters in the Andorra financial and legal consultancy firm Walters Karrer International, had first met Mr Corr just a month earlier, the court heard.
After Mr Justice Peter Kelly reminded Mr Corr that the question was whether the selling of the Donnybrook apartment after so many years on the market was a stroke of good luck or because of the judgment against him, Mr Corr paused and stared into space.
Reminded by the judge he was under oath, he replied: “I was trying to protect whatever I could.”
Mr Corr said he “never thought for a second” he would be required to pay all of a €1.4 million judgment. The money he got from property sales largely went to put out “financial fires”, he said.
The examination resumes on July 3rd.