AIB IS conducting an investigation into the involvement of two senior managers in property businesses.
Tommy Hopkins, a general manager with AIB commercial banking in AIB Bankcentre, Ballsbridge, Dublin, and John Hughes, head of business banking, AIB Eyre Square, Galway, are involved in a number of property and other companies.
Filings in the Companies Registration Office show the companies deal with a wide range of banks, though not AIB.
The two men are in business with people who have separate relationships with the AIB Bankcentre branch and AIB Eyre Square.
Mr Hopkins is a 50 per cent shareholder in Marchbury Properties Ltd, which built 222 houses in Balbriggan, Co Dublin, in the year to April 2007 and has other developments in train.
The company lost €7.24 million in the year to the end of April 2008. It had bank loans of €23 million.
The other shareholder, Thomas Durcan, is the owner, along with Mary Durcan, of Kingbrook Builders Ltd, which banks with the AIB Bankcentre branch in Ballsbridge.
Mr Hughes is a shareholder and director of Banagher Investments Ltd which, like Marchbury, has its registered office at Mr Hopkins’s home on Palmerston Park, Rathmines, Dublin. Mr Durcan, Mr Hopkins and Mr Hughes are the company’s shareholders.
It has a mortgage registered with Anglo Irish Bank in relation to a former Methodist church and other property on Hendrick Street, Blackhall Place and Oxmanstown Lane, in Stoneybatter, Dublin.
However, the company’s accounts do not show any substantial borrowings, profits or losses.
Mr Hughes is a director and shareholder of a number of west of Ireland companies that have relationships with banks other than AIB.
His business activities include arrangements with partners who separately have dealings with AIB Eyre Square.
Mr Hughes told The Irish Times that everything he was involved with was in compliance with AIB’s code of ethics governing such matters. He said there was no conflict of interest involved.
He would not comment on the size of the borrowings involved in his various activities.
Calls to Mr Hopkins’s office were not returned.
A spokesman for AIB said that he had no comment to make on the matter.