By: Michael O’Farrell
Investigations Editor in Brazil
DISGRACED solicitor Michael Lynn and his wife own a million euro development site in Brazil and paid €30,000 to join an exclusive golf and country club close to their home, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Lynn was also planning to move his family – pregnant wife Bríd Murphy and three-year-old son Aaron Morgan – into an exclusive development of villas being built in a wealthy suburb of Recife – the city of 4.5 million people on Brazil’s northeast coast where he was arrested three weeks ago.
This picture of the solicitor’s life in the sun-kissed South American haven is in stark contrast to the image of a man living simply as an English language teacher as was widely reported at the time of his arrest.
He fled Ireland almost six years ago and is wanted by the authorities here in connection with more than €80m in unpaid debts to several financial institutions. Lynn also left behind dozens of investors who lost money following a botched attempt to buy property in Portugal, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary through his firm.
This week the MOS succeeded in contacting Lynn at Cotel maximum security prison where he is being held pending an extradition hearing.
However, he declined a request to be interviewed citing legal advice. His wife Bríd, who has been visiting him in the past two weeks, also declined to speak when approached by the MOS.
But now an exclusive MOS investigation can for the first time reveal the origins of Lynn’s investments in Brazil and detail his extensive plans to relaunch himself as a property developer even as hundreds of investors back home in Ireland remain unpaid.
Lynn first expressed an interest in buying beachfront Brazilian properties – and even a hotel – in January 2007 during his first trip to the northeast of the country just months before he absconded from Ireland.
Thanks to the business connections he made then – and the continuing help of Portuguese associates from Lynn’s former Algarve base in Tavira – he has now sought to relaunch his real estate career with an ambitious plan to build 140 residential units on a site in the industrial town of Cabo de Santo Agostinho.
Situated 35km from Lynn’s current residence – a walled villa compound complete with pool and electrified security defences – Cabo is undergoing a spectacular property boom as workers from the busy port of Suape and surrounding industrial complex seek living quarters.
Property and tax records obtained by the MOS reveal that a Brazilian company formed by Lynn and his wife last year bought a 4,182sq.m site in Cabo in November 2011 for just over €253,000. Just one month later the site was officially valued for tax purposes by the local municipality at just over €1m.
The increase in value is likely explained by Lynn’s plans to build apartments on the large plot which is immediately adjacent to another apartment block already being built by an unrelated firm.
‘It seemed like a good idea at the time,’ said Mark Astle, Lynn’s friend and boss at the Recife English language school where Lynn taught part time.
Mr Astle said: ‘He told me he got approval for 140 flats one to three months ago and he’s been trying to sell them to port workers.’ Mr Astle – who initially put up Bríd and her son in his home after Lynn’s arrest – also said Lynn had bought a property in a condominium development being built in a wealthy area of Recife.
Together with Mr Astle, Lynn is also a member of Recife’s elite Caxangá Golf and Country Club – a luxurious 63-acre hideaway where the region’s most wealthy citizens stable their horses and dine in a private restaurant overlooking a pristine pool.
According to the club’s database Lynn paid the top level €30,000 membership fee on March 29, 2012. It gives him an ownership stake in Recife’s most elite club which along with golf, tennis, horse riding, shooting, restaurant and pool facilities, provides invaluable access to the region’s most influential and wealthy individuals. His wife and son are also listed as members.
Teaching English at Britanic – Recife’s most renowned private school – is another avenue for Lynn to gain access to elite circles. The school counts many prominent businessmen and figures among its graduates. Many of its young students will shortly join the privileged ranks of Brazil’s business and political circles.
But whatever his new associations the MOS has confirmed through business records that Lynn remains associated with businessmen from his former base in Tavira, where his once majestic hill-top villa now lies empty and overgrown having been repossessed by the banks.
A clue to those links is found in the business records of a heretofore unknown Brazilian firm that shares offices with Lynn’s firm.
The company is owned by two Portuguese citizens from Tavira, one of which lists his Brazilian address as the home currently occupied by Lynn. The other owner was associated with Lynn’s former property vehicle in Portugal.
The company has capital of about €100,000 but has yet to file any accounts.
The MOS has confirmed that this company Euromercosul Costrucao E Assessoria Ltda and Lynn’s company, Quantum, applied and received credit card processing facilities on the same day in June and that both firms banked in the same branch of Caixa bank in downtown Recife.
However, for reasons unknown, the accounts were closed by the bank on the same day just two weeks later. The closure does not appear to have dented Lynn’s ability to fund his lifestyle.
How he continues to pay for his luxury life despite the fact that his global property empire collapsed leaving hundreds of unpaid creditors and investors has never been comprehensively established.
But previous investigations by the MOS have revealed a string of asset transfers from his previous companies in Portugal, Hungary and Bulgaria to firms in locations such as Panama and the Seychelles after he went on the run in 2007.
It’s believed that that money and any other funds spirited away by Lynn is probably now funding his luxury Brazilian life.
A housekeeper and nanny were evident at his home this week as Bríd travelled to and from prison and the offices of her husband’s lawyers in a new €30,000 Hyundai Santa Fe with blackedout windows.
And even the car provides a clue that Lynn’s interests in Brazil may extend further afield than is currently known. In January, his car picked up a speeding fine in the city of Maceio, 257km away in the neighbouring state of Alagoas.
It’s just one more legal headache for the beleaguered solicitor and his wife to potentially contend with. The fine was not paid so if stopped by police for any reason the car will be impounded.
- Translation, reporting and local assistance for this article was provided by Larissa Brainer in Recife.
