{"id":57411,"date":"2025-10-02T15:21:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T15:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/57411\/"},"modified":"2025-10-02T15:21:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T15:21:09","slug":"former-law-firm-managing-partner-lied-to-partners-to-save-own-skin-court-told-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/57411\/","title":{"rendered":"Former law firm managing partner lied to partners to save own skin, court told \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">The former managing partner of a leading law firm in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/belfast\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/belfast\">Belfast <\/a>lied to his fellow partners to \u201csave his own skin\u201d regarding a multimillion pound property deal, a Belfast court heard on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Ian Coulter \u2013 a former managing partner of Tughan\u2019s \u2013 is standing trial at Belfast Crown Court on five fraud-related charges arising from the sale of a Northern Ireland property loan book held by the National Asset Management Agency (Nama).<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Coulter, who is 54 and from Templepatrick Road in Ballyclare, denied all the charges which the prosecution alleges were committed over a period from April 3 to December 1, 2014.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-it-article-body__interstitial-link\">[\u00a0<a aria-label=\"Open related story\" class=\"c-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/business\/2025\/10\/01\/no-evidence-peter-robinson-received-money-tied-to-nama-loan-sale-belfast-court-hears\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">No evidence Peter Robinson received money tied to Nama loan sale, Belfast court hearsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Also in the dock is prominent businessman Frank Cushnahan. The 83-year old, from Alexandra Gate in Holywood, faces two fraud charges which span from April 1 to November 7, 2013.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Both men have denied all the charges levelled against them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Prosecuting KC Jonathan Kinnear continued opening the State\u2019s case to the jury for a fourth day. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The jury has already been told that after a deal to sell the Nothern Irish loan book to American investment fund Pimco fell through, a second deal to sell to another US fund, Cerberus, was agreed in April 2014.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Mr Kinnear presented the jury with documents which prosecutors say indicated that Coulter was set to benefit financially from the deal with Cerberus and that his actions were fraudulent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">This, he said, included setting up a business bank account in the Isle of Man for a company which Coulter controlled, using a dormant account held by Tughans to receive a \u00a39 million fee then transferring the sum into the bank account in the Isle of Man.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The prosecutor said Coulter also told a secretary to delete the invoice for the \u00a39 million which was sent from Tughans to the bank account in the Isle of Man, which she did not do.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Mr Kinnear said that when Coulter\u2019s fellow managing partners in Tughans began questioning what has occurred, he started \u201ctelling his partners lies to save his own skin.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The former managing partner of a leading law firm in Belfast lied to his fellow partners to \u201csave&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4501,61,60,27141,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-57411","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-belfast","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-nama","12":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}