Former Irish rugby star Brendan Mullin hit with €2m judgment

A London property investment company has registered matching €2 million judgments against former Irish rugby international Brendan Mullin and his one-time business partner Stephane Fund in relation to loans used to fund the purchase of luxury apartments in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4, from the National Asset Management Agency.

Mr Mullin (58), who is separately awaiting trial accused of deception and theft of almost €600,000 from Bank of Ireland, was a director and sole shareholder of Bisvale DAC until his resignation from the board last September.

The company owned 11 apartments at the Shrewsbury Square development on Sandymount Avenue in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4, and two adjoining townhouses which it bought from Nama in 2017 with a view to redeveloping the properties. London-based ARA Venn Capital funded the 2017 transaction but last October the company had David O’Connor, partner at BDO’s corporate recovery department, appointed as receiver over the assets.

Mr O’Connor’s appointment came shortly after Mr Mullin, a former managing director of Bank of Ireland Private Banking, was charged in September 2021 over bank fraud allegations going back a decade.

Bisvale, which has not filed accounts since 2018, owed more than €11 million to creditors at the end of 2017, according to its most recent set of accounts.

It is understood that the loans used to fund the Shrewsbury Square purchase were secured against the Dublin 4 assets as well as personal guarantees made by the two businessmen at the time of the transaction, which were called in by ARA Venn Capital last year.

Not reached for comment

High Court proceedings were initiated in December 2021 and summary judgment was granted against Mr Mullin and Mr Fund in late April.

ARA Venn Capital registered two €2 million judgments — one against Mr Mullin and one against Mr Fund — through an Irish agent, Mount Street Mortgage Financing on July 21st. The judgments appeared in the latest issue of Stubbs Gazette.

Solicitors for Mr Mullin and Mr Fund could not be reached for comment.

Shrewsbury Square was built by developers Sebastian Devlin and Johnny Burns of Woodgreen Property at the height of the boom.

The upmarket scheme was launched months before the 2008 property crash. Woodgreen managed to sell all but 13 properties in the 80-apartment development with the unsold assets ending up in Nama before being put up for sale in 2016 with a guide price of €9.5 million.

Mr Mullin — who played 55 times for Ireland between 1984 and 1994 — was sent forward for trial last December by Dublin District Court facing nine charges of theft, five charges of false accounting and one charge of deception, all relating to events at Bank of Ireland on Mespil Road, Dublin, on dates between July 2011 and March 2013.

In February, Judge Melanie Greally fixed the trial for May 7th, 2024, and remanded Mr Mullin on continuing bail.