Nama asks US court to postpone Dunne bankruptcy trial until May

Lawyers for the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) have asked a US court to postpone until next May the trial to decide whether property developer Seán Dunne should be allowed to walk away from his debts. In a new filing to the Connecticut bankruptcy court, Nama subsidiary National Asset Loan Management want the trial postponed from a scheduled start-date in January.

Lawyers told the court that Mr Dunne’s unexpected decision to seek to withdraw his US bankruptcy application in August, and his decision to withdraw a “motion to dismiss” application, caused “a waste of nearly three months” in Nama’s action.

The State agency, which said that Mr Dunne had listed total debts of $343 million (€275 million) to Nama in his bankruptcy filings, wants to extend the final date for discovery in the case to February 28th, 2015.

New trial date

A court hearing has been scheduled for December 9th to agree on the new trial date.

In March 2013 the Co Carlow developer filed for bankruptcy in US, where he has lived since 2010. Four months later Nama issued an “adversary” case seeking to prevent him being granted a fresh financial start.

Nama claims he fraudulently transferred tens of millions of euro to his wife and that she is a front for his property deals in the US with money that should go to his creditors. The couple do not deny the transfers but maintain that they are legal and took place when he was worth hundreds of millions of euro.