A 78-year-old woman in Cork has asked the High Court to liquidate an Irish business owned by a bankrupt German real estate company.

Retiree High Cout was told she owed her a total of € 135,000 and her lawyer told the court that she “was constantly cheated” when she demanded repayment of her investment in the loan.

The German real estate group collapsed last year after taking more than a billion euros from investors in Ireland, the UK, Asia and elsewhere.

Irish investors

Funds had been raised from more than 1,800 Irish investors through the issuance of loan notes with the aim of purchasing and renovating listed buildings in Germany with pledges of annual returns of up to 15%.

Today in the High Court, lawyer for Ms Kathleen Dineen of Ballincollig, Co Cork applied for the liquidation of MUT 103 Ltd, an Irish company with offices in Naas, Co Kildare, which is linked to the former German real estate group known as Dolphin Capital.

Bernard Dunleavy SC for Ms Dineen stated that the retiree owed € 127,000 plus interest of € 8,000.

He said Ms Dineen suffered from multiple sclerosis and suffered a stroke three years ago. The loan note was for three years and it was due in February 2020. He said Ms Dineen, through her son, wrote to ask for the money to be repaid and that a formal request had been made in August of last year. She had also requested meetings with the company.

“No recognition”

Mr Dunleavy said the company failed to acknowledge that the debt was owed and that there had been no acknowledgment on behalf of the company.

The lawyer said Ms Dineen was “constantly misguided” and said if the company had been straightforward and straightforward it would be a better position. “The company didn’t warn her that she couldn’t pay her. She was told she had no complaints, which was clearly inaccurate. None of the promised meetings took place, ”the lawyer said.

In an affidavit in court, Ms Dineen said she was an elderly woman and asked her son Paul Dineen, who is a lawyer, to help her deal with the business in an effort to recover the money she would have owed him.

“Multiple concerns”

She said her son had had numerous communications on her behalf with the company and its director Wealth Options Trustees Limited, in which he raised “several concerns” about the structure between the company and Dolphin Capital and demanded payment of the deemed debt.

She said the main issue she was concerned about was that the alleged debt had not been substantially addressed and no payment had been received.

Adviser to the Peggy O’Rourke Company. SC stated that it requested that the motion be dismissed, adjourned or stayed. She said it was a very complicated process and meetings of creditors of Irish loan note holders to assess future options could start as early as early next week.

Judge Brian O’Moore will deliver his ruling on the winding-up application later this week.