Administrator alleges ‘threats’ over rents at Ely-managed block

The liquidation of Ely Properties, an apartment management company owned by the flamboyant businessman Philip Marley, is throwing up all sorts of interesting allegations.

A High Court affidavit from Maurice Ginty, an administrator for a Catholic housing charity that places clients in apartments managed by Ely, alleges that some apartment owners complained Marley's company wasn't paying them the rents collected from the charity.

The charity then withheld some of the rents from Ely until the matter was resolved, he says.

Ginty alleges in his affidavit: “I found myself at the receiving end of threats, this time from an individual calling on behalf of Ely who left me in great personal fear, such was the nature of his verbal threats about who he was and what could happen to me if the rents were not paid over immediately (if I ‘read the newspapers’ I would see that he ‘took no prisoners’.) I say that I am still in fear of this individual.”

"1,000 per cent that was not me," Marley told an Irish Times colleague, from his room at the five-star Powerscourt hotel in Enniskerry, formerly the Ritz Carlton. "I haven't a clue where that comes from."

Another affidavit outlines the harrowing story of an 82-year-old woman who owns a buy-to-let apartment managed by Ely. She fell behind with her mortgage repayments, her solicitor alleged, after she stopped receiving rents. Now, the solicitor says, the banks are chasing her for repayment and her health has deteriorated.