A dozen Irish investment advisers and financial brokers shared in commissions from Dolphin Capital of more than €2m in just one year, according to documents seen by the Sunday Independent.
ank statements from 2016 detail a large number of regular payments of anything from a few hundred euro to more than €100,000 at a time to various well- known Irish brokers who sold the Dolphin loan notes marketed by the now collapsed German property investment scheme.
As many as 1,800 Irish people have potentially lost more than €100m of pension and other savings that they invested in Dolphin.
In an entirely separate transaction, the Dolphin bank statements also reveal that the failed property investment scheme at the same time transferred huge sums of money into the bank account of a Cayman Island-registered company c alled DT Cayman.
The statements show an internal transfer totalling €13.17m in November 2015 into a euro-denominated Lloyds Bank account belonging to DT Cayman.
The Dolphin scheme was sold to Irish people as an unregulated loan note for periods of up to five years and promised large returns. More than 1,800 Irish people transferred their pensions or other savings into the scheme, which was sold through the offices of independent investment intermediaries throughout the country, although much of the sales activity was in Cork and in the West.
Statements from a bank account controlled by Dolphin, as well as individual invoices sent by Irish brokers to its Hanover, Germany office, reveal how lucrative the scheme was to the Irish brokers and intermediaries who sold the loan notes.
In 2016, Limerick-based Irish Pension Solutions (IPS) was by far the biggest recipient of such payments from the Dolphin account. IPS received 29 payments that year, ranging from €658.42 to €96,908.18. In total, the 2016 bank statement shows €758,496.43 in payments to IPS.
Two companies owned by Kinsale, Co Cork-based Barrie Graham, the former wealth and private banking manager of Bank of Scotland (Ireland), received a combined total of more than €430,000. Garvock Financial received 14 payments totalling €190,271.43, while Graham’s company Valrock Private Equity also received 16 payments totalling €246,091, including one for €120,000.
Youghal, Co Cork-based Kilcoran Financial Services, owned by Con Spillane, received 28 payments from the Dolphin bank account during 2016, totalling more than €260,000.
Kavanagh Wealth Management in Ballincollig, Co Cork received 24 payments totalling over €220,000, while Fahey Financial Solutions in Barna, Co Galway received 19 payments totalling more than €140,000. Rathcoole-based Donegan Investment Solutions, owned by Lorraine Donegan, received nine payments totalling more than €92,000, while other Irish intermediaries were also named in the Dolphin bank statements as receiving varying amounts less than that.
The Sunday Independent contacted the brokers but only Eamon Lynch, who owns both IPS and Invest 123.ie responded.
“I confirm that we have received payments from both Dolphin IG and subsequently from Wealth Options in respect of our referral of clients to the Dolphin Loan notes,” he said. Lynch said he could “confirm that I recognise the personal names you have identified” on invoices sent by his firm to Dolphin between 2015 and 2017 but that he was not in a position to confirm the individual invoices.
Lynch said that the total value of all Dolphin loan notes that his clients had invested in was about 10pc of the Irish market exposure.
“I can confirm to you that we did not charge our clients commissions for their investment in Dolphin Loan Notes,” said Lynch in response to detailed questions.
“Dolphin paid commissions to introducing brokers for business introduced,” he said before later describing the payments as “introductory commissions in line with industry standards”.
Lynch said that IPS was “also working, as part of a group, with other financial advisers who also have clients invested in Dolphin Loan Notes to endeavour to recover as much as possible on behalf of all our clients”.
”We are taking legal advice in respect of all potential avenues for recovery of our clients’ investment,” said Lynch.
IPS clients who invested substantial sums in Dolphin loan notes have previously told the Sunday Independent that they had great difficulty finding out information about their investments from the company when problems began to emerge.
“In respect of the communication issues which you have reported, I deeply regret if our clients have had difficulty in contacting our offices or advisers, we are all working from home,” said Lynch.
