Larry Goodman lost out on the Coolamber deal, but his evidence to the planning tribunal is putting the heat on Liam Lawlor, writes Paul Cullen.
Another land deal, another Liam Lawlor denial. Another complex series of offshore transactions, another quick profit on the back of a land rezoning.
It all seems a familiar scenario from the tribunals, involving another quick tour of offshore locations – Guernsey, British Virgin Islands, Liechtenstein – and multiple layers of secrecy and concealment.
These, indeed, are features of the latest land deal to come under the microscope of the planning tribunal, centring on 55 acres of land at Coolamber near Lucan, Co Dublin. Yet there are several novel features to the Coolamber deal that demand our attention. For a start, there’s the involvement of beef baron Larry Goodman, who put up the finance to buy the agricultural land in 1987.
Just £209,000 – less than the price of a single house today – is all it took to purchase the land back then. Yet the same land, since endowed with residential zoning through the heroic efforts of Dublin county councillors, is now covered by housing with a total worth of about €250 million.
But it was another world back then in the 1980s, when the banks had tighter purses and £200,000 was an impossible sum for most people to raise.
Then-Fianna Fáil TD and councillor Liam Lawlor could see the potential of Coolamber House and its adjoining land from the comfort of his Georgian home across the road in Lucan, but he didn’t have the ready cash. Neither did his business associate, Jim Kennedy, even though his gaming arcades were taking in truckloads of cash every week. Their associate, solicitor John Caldwell, was a wizard at devising offshore structures for avoiding tax, but that was with other people’s money.
However, Lawlor had connections, none of them more cash-rich than Goodman. The beef tribunal wasn’t even a gleam in the eye of an English TV producer at this stage; besides, Goodman owed the politician a few favours. After all, Lawlor had been his right-hand man in the well-publicised battle with Killeshandra Co-Op for the takeover of Bailieboro Co-Op.
It was Lawlor who organised the canvass of farmer shareholders that swung things in Goodman’s favour. So he approached Goodman towards the end of 1987. Lawlor’s timing was good: only amonth before, the beef baron had appointed him to the board of Food Industries, on whose behalf the politician would later visit Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as a sort of debt collector for the beef baron.
The Louthman readily agreed to make the money available; in all, he seems to have advanced over £600,000 to Lawlor during this period.
What he got for this investment is not clear; while he was represented as the owner of the land on some documents, the actual owners seem to have been Kennedy, Caldwell and Lawlor. Not that this information appeared on any records. Under the structure set up by Caldwell, an Isle of Man company, Navona Ltd, bought the property and held it in trust for an Irish company, Southfield Property Company.
Arrangements were made to offload the land to builder Joe Tiernan, a onetime Fine Gael election candidate, for more than £2 million, subject to planning permission being granted. Everything went well at first, as councillors voted by the required 75 per cent majority to rezone the land in 1990, against the advice of the planners and in spite of opposition from local residents. However, An Bórd Pleanála overturned this decision in the following year and the deal collapsed.
At this point, the main characteristic of the deal went from complex to murky. As disputes arose between the various parties, Caldwell engineered the transfer of ownership from Southfield to a British Virgin Islands company, Vino Properties Ltd.
Goodman got £350,000 back in 1987 but was still paying interest on a bank loan. Then, in 1990, an examiner was appointed to his companies and his financial situation took a nosedive. He wanted out of the Coolamber project. The trouble was that none of the other parties was in a position to take on the cost of the interest payments on the bank loan.
Indeed, money was so scarce in those days that even Tiernan had to borrow the money for his deposit on the land. Curiously, this £110,000 came from Robin Rennicks, better known as the man who delivered a £30,000 cheque from Fitzwilton to former minister Ray Burke in 1989.
Goodman, through his accountant, offered to underwrite the deal, but only if he was given complete control. Caldwell said this wouldn’t be possible because of the offshore structure and that, in any case, Kennedy would take court proceedings if this happened.
A number of minor characters then entered the plot. Noel Smyth, best known for his role as Ben Dunne’s solicitor but a major property developer in his own right, came in to bat on Goodman’s behalf. Confusingly, though, he also seems to have represented Lawlor for a time. Smyth was accompanied to a meeting with the project’s bankers by Gerry Gannon, who ranks today as one of the largest housebuilders in the Dublin area. The bank officials say Gannon claimed to have paid off Goodman’s debt, but Gannon denies any involvement with the Coolamber lands.
By 1993, The new development plan for Dublin changed the status of the land to residential and a second deal was made with Tiernan. Vino Properties received more than £3 million when this transaction was completed in 1994. A profit of £2.5 million-plus had been realised in the space of a few years.
Lawlor believed he was due £375,000 out of the profits of the sale to Tiernan. He provided Smyth with what he said were notes of meetings with Caldwell and Kennedy, at which they outlined their respective involvement. Lawlor’s own notes appear to show he had a 41 per cent stake, later reduced to 25 per cent, yet the politician today denies any involvement in the project.
Goodman never did get the £159,000 he was seeking but Lawlor was more successful. In 1995, DM825,000 (£350,000) was lodged to his numbered account with a bank in Liechtenstein. Caldwell says he made this payment because Lawlor was blackmailing him.
Goodman gave evidence at the tribunal this week in quite different circumstances from his appearance at the beef tribunal, which ended 11 years ago. On that occasion, his businesses were in dire circumstances and he found himself on the rack over business practices; he appears at the planning tribunal, however, with his business fortunes restored, while his current role is tantamount to that of a whistleblower. In contrast, Lawlor’s political career is over, he has spent three periods in jail and he is facing financial ruin as he fights an increasingly lonely and bizarre battle against the tribunal.
Ironically, none of the details of the Coolamber deal would have come out if someone hadn’t tried to short-change Goodman, one of the country’s toughest businessmen.