Banks Chase Lynn’s Foreign Assets.
I want to start by saying this is a classic example of throwing good money after bad if you ask me (not that anybody sought my opinion or anything).
Why? There are a few things to consider, and first and foremost I would say that currently banks need to concentrate on getting profitable and doing what they do best which is make money, because there is a financial sector crisis going on and initiating litigation abroad will simply dilute their efforts and get them in the papers for all the wrong reasons. what does a shareholder or mortgage holder from one of these institutions think when their bank is only mentioned in the press because they got ripped off? Its a PR nightmare, damned if you do damned if you don’t.
They are (apparently) chasing properties in Luxembourg, Portugal and Bulgaria. The latter country being a hotbed of corruption. I know a Dublin based solicitor who won a family law case awarding custody to the mother (based in Ireland) from the father (who had taken the child to Romania), victory? Not really, every time (after translators and a billion phone calls) the cops over there were sent to the house to get the child, the dad would pay them off and they would come back empty handed. Eventually she had to go there herself and I think the banks are fooling themselves if they reckon its a case of just ‘go grab his stuff’
There is the added complication that they will have to prove his guilt to these nations first. Otherwise what’s to stop a bank abroad coming over here and claiming they own any house? That burden of proof will be the first stumbling block, then consider the cost: solicitors here solicitors there, lots of time spent one liaising with the other, translations, time taken to understand foreign rules, codes, laws, and procedures. Are the properties to the value that it is worth all the hassle to repossess them? The property market has fallen in all of these countries, the cost of disposal etc. etc. there are a million stumbling blocks and if there is any success the lenders will be like vultures all trying to feed off the same carcass. Who has first entitlement? That might mean yet another legal case to determine who gets what and then one of them might be frozen out, it could drag on for years.
Lynn, who’s whereabouts are unknown (Sunday biz post said ‘where abouts not known’ then ‘thought to be in south america’ in the next paragraph – excellent journalism) could be anywhere, if he had any sense he would have gotten very liquid very fast and I believe that is what he has done, he skipped court dates because he was busy preparing his escape plan.
If he wants to really ‘get away from it all’ I would suggest Bolivia, Evo Morales – their president – was the head of the coca growers group before being president, yes, he was a drug trafficker and then became president, no different from the USA where a blithering moron stole an election 8 years ago in my book.
Get to Bolivia and you have a land border with Paraguay, Peru, Chile, Brazil and Argentina, all excellent places to get away, that’s where many of the world war two war criminals went to and it has proved to be a super choice. Its cheap to live in and corrupt enough that a few quid will get you out of most jams. The weakened US dollar also means he’ll have 50% more money when he goes there (they haven’t really caught on to Euros fully in South America)
His wife is a smart cookie too, well done, a match made in heaven I guess, because when they recently raided their family home there was nothing there other than a tumble dryer, a microwave and a few cases of french wine. Get drunk banks, because that’s about the only solace i see coming from this debacle. If his wife is not joint mortgagee on properties here can they repossess the family home? I’ll have to ask a solicitor friend for an opinion on that.
If his wife gives away everything she can in the mean time to friends and relatives then you can’t repossess anything, I would hope that’s why their house was empty when the cops went there. The final gambit is far from played but so far its Lynn 1 Banks 0.
A further cloud over the issue will be: what if he didn’t buy the properties he was telling the banks about? what if he just squirrelled all the money away as cash and always intended to do a runner? His wife is certainly acting in a way that hints of collusion. And if it was all planned in advance maybe she’ll go on a trip to Florida when this is all done, from there she’ll pick up a ticket to Panama and from panama go to Venezuela and then on to Bolivia or wherever, in any case, that trail will quickly go cold, the only ones keeping good track are the USA and that trail will die in Panama or where ever in central America she makes a pit stop.
If the money was hidden as cash the banks might be chasing properties that are worth nothing or worse, that don’t exist. If you have a valuer on your side you could get them (because of the way this was perpetrated) to give false values etc. and if you are mortgaging a property here multiple times who is to say that he then took the money and put it into property abroad? why not a cash account abroad under a new name and new citizenship? You can still buy your way into citizenship (up until recently even Ireland did this) in many countries. It would be the same old brand new Michael Lynn.
How can he be caught? Well, this is the tricky bit, the banks would be better served getting some good private investigators on the job, and sending a few to South America, his computers or ISP provider might have some info on places where he may have run to. Then go with a fist full of cash and grab him.
The legal proceedings here have to get to the point where he can never come back, not for a parents funeral or anything and if it was o.k. to get sneaky I’d get any emails coming to or from his and her parents and every conceivable avenue he might use to speak to his wife.
He could also hold things up if he had retained solicitors in other countries to object to any legal proceedings brought about in other countries. The Garda (i wrote about this in a previous post) are not actively searching for him so he can travel freely without any other passport, although i suspect that he is now Mark Lang from El Salvador or something.
Another factor is that the banks are chasing Lynn down a rabbit hole that he designed, not them so they will have to figure out the inner workings of the things he did before they can chase anything. And again, if he had any smarts he would have destroyed his computer and shredded files, leaving people to start from the basis of supposition.
I think the only thing they will find at the bottom of this rabbit hole isn’t a goose laying golden eggs but a mad hatter feasting on mouldy chicken…. good luck to all of them.