Cerberus Capital Management will appear before Ireland’s Public Accounts Committee on 17 November as part of the ongoing investigation into the £1.2bn sale of Nama’s Project Eagle portfolio to the US investment firm.
Mark Neporent, chief operating officer at Cerberus, will give evidence on the deal, which took place in 2014. The process has been plagued by allegations of hidden deals and conflicts of interest.
Cerberus won the deal a month after recruiting law firms Brown Rudnick and Tughans, which had previously represented Pimco, a rival bidder in the deal.
Pimco dropped out after it discovered that a £15m success fee would be split between the two law firms and Frank Cushnahan, an adviser to Pimco and a former member of Nama’s advisory committee.
Neporent will likely be questioned about why Cerberus took on the two law firms and whether the firm had any knowledge of the allegations made by Mike Wallace, an Irish politician, that Tughans had £7m “earmarked for a Northern Ireland politician”.
In September, Ireland’s comptroller and auditor general found that the £4.5bn portfolio of loans secured against 850 properties in Northern Ireland had been sold at a potential loss of £190m to the taxpayer.
The US Department of Justice launched an inquiry last year into Cerberus’s involvement in the deal.
>>> Click here for a timeline of the Project Eagle deal
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