For all the opprobrium heaped on the Kelly couple who were evicted from their Killiney home, they are mere amateur small fish when compared to some nearby property sharks : another Killiney couple who are in the news.
Brian O'Donnell and his psychiatrist wife, Mary Patricia, of Vico Road, Killiney are being pursued for €75m in the High Court by Bank of Ireland. The O'Donnell residence being a stone's throw from where the Kelly's once lived in their now-repossessed home.
But unlike the Kelly's, no bailiff's boots have yet stained the pleasant interior of the O'Donnell's palatial, seaside residence --which not only has a swimming pool, sauna and a gym, but also tennis courts and stables dotting the generous grounds.
High end property is the mark of the O'Donnells, whose Irish property empire included houses on Ailesbury Road, a country estate on Lough Corrib and ski chalet in the French resort of Courchevel.
Their property company, Vico Capital, bought Sanctuary Buildings, in London for £170m in 2006. And in 2008 the O'Donnell's paid a record-setting $172.5million for a 199,000 sq ft property on Pennsylvania Avenue - just a.few blocks from the White House.
Various banks are now seeking to recover borrowings of €457 million to Morgan Stanley, and €235m to German property bank Aareal. The O'Donnells' overall debt is about €886m.
LEGAL EAGLES
But you won't find the O'Donnells camping in a tent in Killiney. They now live in the UK - where they are seeking bankruptcy protection. It's an astute move by the O'Donnells. And not their first.
Even as the relatively naive Kelly couple were being roughly evicted, the sheriff was abandoning a plan to raid the O'Donnell home on Vico Road for valuables like works of art.
The hitch: the O'Donnell family home has been defensively placed in trust for the couple's four children. Who knew! Apparently not even the High Court, which appeared to have been misled (unintentionally, of course) by filings which failed to reveal the trust.
Explaining in court this week, Mr O'Donnell said he used "loose language" not intended to mislead the court. He also used misleading language when describing his investment company as a limited liability firm. It's not.
Mr Justice Kelly said that O'Donnell's Vico Capital entity was "very shadowy indeed" and that O'Donnell gave a "skewed and inaccurate picture" of his worth.
Bear in mind that there's no such slur attaching to the Kelly couple.
Despite this, Irish Finance minister, Michael Noonan failed to emerge to castigate O'Donnell's many attempts to delay or evade his creditors.
Not that there's one rule for the evicted Kelly couple and another for far wealthier and better connected Irish solicitors like O'Donnell. Perish the thought.
By the way, Brian O'Donnell was a former partner with top Dublin law firm William Fry, and as principal in Brian O'Donnell and Partners, was one of 64 firms appointed by NAMA to its panel of potential legal advisers.
ONE LAW?
Were the Kelly's as adept at gaming the system, their Killiney house would have been held in trust by some offshore entity and they would be still inside - not out on their ears.
Were they as media savvy, they might have gone on the Marian Finucane Show as O'Donnell did last December, to put a case to the public which he had avoided pleading in court.
That interview prompted an Irish Independent article which reported a friend of the O'Donnells saying that when family saw the children's names published in the media they "felt as if they had been criminalised."
Not really. If you want to see "criminalized," see Noonan's attack on the Kelly's for the crime of having 21 properties.
Unfortunately, the Kelly's lacked high protection factor, repossession-blocking cream.
It's used by all the best people:
Simply apply a generous coating of legal snake oil.
