On Saturday July 13, a hub for Ukrainians living in West Wicklow was officially opened at an event held at the Tearman Gardens tea shop in Baltinglass. There appears to have been much local support for the event and there are currently around 140 Ukrainians currently resident in the Avon Hotel, Blessington.
The Avon Hotel forms another link in one specific nexus of companies and individuals who have done very well from the provision of accommodation for both Ukrainians under Temporary Protection and for those seeking International Protection from a randomly diverse group of countries.
The Avon is owned by a company called Arturo Ventures Unlimited. That company was incorporated on September 1, 2023. The Avon Hotel as a currently registered business was registered with the Companies Registration Office (CRO) on September 28. The directors of Arturo Ventures Unlimited are Carol Dwyer and Sinéad Fennelly and the secretary of the company is Millbank Trustees. A splendidly monikered Sharon Spendlove was one of the original directors but she jacked after a few weeks.
Fennelly had a judgement of €19,952 made against her by the Collector General in August 2019, but she has not looked back since. Interestingly, all but one of her current directorships are with companies involved in the accommodation caper. She is also the only director and sole shareholder in Fennelly Advisory which has an address at the Kippure Estate – the site of an accommodation centre managed by Seefin Events of which she is a director along with Carol Dwyer.
Fennelly actually has several separate registrations with the CRO. She is also a director of Dougfield Management of which Eoghan Coughlan of Goldstein/Quanta is also a director. There are no details of who owns the company. Fennelly was also a director of Duarte Chef which was dissolved in June this year and was wholly owned by Coughlan.
Somewhat bizarrely, to my eyes at least, one of the Sinéad Fennellys resigned as a director of Seefin Events Unlimited on September 3, 2021 but another Sinéad Fennelly, the same person born on the same day, became a secretary of Seefin Events Unlimited on February 15, 2023. Yet another Sinéad Fennelly was a director and owner of a company called Kimberlite. Another one used to own Retail Home Direct – and a Sinéad Catherine Fennelly was the owner of a company called Verbantas: She truly appears to be the Padre Pio of the asylum accommodation centre industry.
You will not find any record of payments made to either Avon or to Arturo Ventures Unlimited. Rather, the cheques from the Department of Minister Roderic O’Gorman have been cashed by an entity known as The Avon Arturo Ventures. There is no such company registered within the state of that name.
Anyway, let’s not nitpick. The important thing is that between the last three months of 2023 and the first three months of 2024 the people who own the place have pocketed and pursed a not to be sniffed at €1,120,000.
Which would be happy feckin’ days for any person, but especially when it is just another notch on the bedpost of accommodation payments which have accrued to a complicated but intimately connected nexus of companies and individuals who have drawn down eye-watering amounts of cash through their good fortune in being in the right places at the right time and having the wherewithal to be able to snap up locations that happily are almost invariably accepted for the purpose of accommodating the tired and huddled masses of the earth.
At the heart of this nexus is Carol Dwyer of Dunboyne, County Meath. We have mentioned this person before as a director of several big hitters in the sector, so perhaps it is appropriate that we take a more forensic look at all of the companies concerned and their links to one another, which are largely through Ms. Dwyer.
Arturo is a perfect example of this. Dwyer and Sinéad Fennelly are directors and Millbank Trustees, the company secretary, is fully owned by Dwyer. Sharon Spendlove, one of the original directors of Arturo, is secretary of Millbank Trustees. Arturo itself is fully owned by Edgewell Unlimited.
The directors of Edgewell are Dwyer and Fennelly and Edgewell is wholly owned by another company called Bergvon but there are no company records for any such entity with the CRO here. Nor is it a registered business in the UK. It is, in fact, registered in the Isle of Man which is a tax haven. Bergvon was registered in the Isle of Man on March 1,2023. Bergvon changed its name to Besga on December 13, 2023.
Gript has gotten access to the Isle of Man company records which show that the application of March 1, 2023 stated that Bergvon was a limited partnership between Jetara Unlimited and Biska Unlimited both with the same address at the East Wall IPAS accommodation centre. Dwyer and Fennelly signed on behalf of both companies.
Then, on December 13, 2023, the company decided for reasons best known to themselves to change their name to Besga. Dwyer signed on behalf of Biska Unlimited (one of the limited partnership listed above). Dwyer also signed the annual statement that was lodged on March 21 this year. She was not required to complete the section which only applies if the company is not benefitting from the 2017 Beneficial Ownership Act.
That in effect means that we have no real idea who the actual owners and therefore the ultimate beneficiaries of the accommodation payments are.
Biska Unlimited was a new name to me. It was incorporated in February 2023. Carol Dwyer was listed as the sole shareholder and owner and the only other director was Sinéad Fennelly but now the CRO lists the 100% sole owner of Biska as the Ballyglen Foundation. That is not listed among Dwyer’s many current and past directorships – more of which anon – and there is no entity called Ballyglen Foundation registered as a company here.
As with Bergvon/Besga, Ballyglen is also registered in the Isle of Man. Its application and foundation instrument was registered in Douglas on the same day as Bergvon. What is interesting in this case, however, is that while Dwyer and Fennelly are listed as members of the Foundation’s “council”, all details of the founders, beneficiaries and shareholders are redacted. Which tells us two things.
Firstly; that Dwyer and Fennelly are not the principals, and secondly that the actual owners and beneficiaries are going to great lengths to ensure that their identity is kept secret.
Kept secret, that is, from the citizens of a state which is channelling vast amounts of money to them and others like them.
Let us for the moment return to Carol Dwyer and do a bit of a thought experiment. Assume if you will that Dwyer is the actual owner of all the companies she is listed as being a shareholder in and director of, and with focus on those drawing down accommodation payments.
Dwyer’s Linkedin page merely modestly mentions that she is a director of Beacon Company Secretaries Limited. That company was incorporated in July 2002. The original owners Partick Doyle and Gráinne Riordan listed hundreds of other companies in which they were directors. Dwyer is now the sole director and shareholder. It declared a profit of €751,897 at the end of December 2022.
The company describes its services as helping to incorporate new companies, managing portfolios of companies with compliance obligations in Ireland, the UK and Isle of Man, overseeing corporate amalgamations including share exchanges, assisting in the striking off and liquidation of companies, and acting as secretary for companies including supervision of staff.
It would not be unfair, therefore, to state that Dwyer simply provides a services front for companies whose principals and beneficiaries as we have seen is largely obscure. There is nothing illegal about any of that of course.
But to return to our thought experiment. Of the 55 companies in which Carol Dwyer is currently a director, five are currently in receipt of payments from the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY) for providing accommodation and services for persons claiming to be refugees from Ukraine under Temporary Protection or others claiming International Protection.
Three other companies, Edgewell, Biska and Jetara are also part of the accommodation sector but have no registered payments made to them. All three of them are connected to the Bergvon/Besga Isle of Man registered entities. Of the five that we do know have received payments – Airways Centre Unlimited, The Avon Arturo Ventures, Burvea Unlimited, Gateway Integration and Seefin Events – they received a total of €22,708,790 in the six months between October 2023 and the end of March 2024 alone.
If Carol Dwyer was the actual owner of those companies she would be among the very wealthiest of people in the state. She is not , I think. Which brings us back to the question of who the real beneficiaries and owners might be.
The curious thing is that all of the five companies in receipt of payments are all registered as being wholly owned by Edgewell. Dwyer and Sinéad Fennelly are the only directors registered for the companies with the CRO. Edgewell itself is 100% owned by Bergvon/Besga and whoever the mysterious actual owners and beneficiaries of that entity happen to be.
One clue as to who might be among the beneficiaries is provided by the information we have about the ownership and management of some of the buildings where the centres are located. In January, we got a glimpse of this through the proposal to use the former St. Mary’s nursing home in Ballsbridge as an accommodation centre for persons claiming International Protection.
That was interesting too as an insight into the mentalité of the Dublin bourgeois elite. Suddenly cocktail evenings where a person questioning the wisdom of throwing hundreds of asylum seekers into the middle of communities would have been as welcome as an outbreak of flatulence in the confines of a space suit were riven with great fretting over health and safety and fire certifications and all other manner of “For Roysh” dog whistles.
Perhaps knowing, perhaps, that it was some of the neighbours who were part of this dastardly assault on house prices and keeping the Deefurs safe from scobies of whatever ethnic origin. The nursing home had been planned to be a build to rent apartment scheme managed by Richmond Homes, part of the Avestus Capital group,an overseas company some might unkindly refer to as a “vulture.”
The Ballsbridge site was then bought by Goldstein Property which via Quanta Capital is linked to the American giant management fund, Oaktree, which controlled assets of more than $170 billion in 2023. Goldstein/Quanta also own the premises at East Wall, the address of several of the Dwyer linked companies, and the site at the Airways industrial estate in Santry which is connected to Airways Centre Unlimited.
Goldstein/Quanta also own the Kippure Estate in Wicklow that is managed by Seefin Events. The accommodation centre in Ballsbridge is managed by Burvea. And yet you will find no record of Goldstein/Quanta, let alone Oaktree, as beneficiaries of the gravy train of asylum payments.
Quanta Capital is registered as wholly owned by Mel Sutcliffe. The other directors are Erin Madden and Eoghan Coughlan who is also listed as a director of Goldstein Holdings registered in the Isle of Man. Barrister Joe Christle was the founder of Quanta Capital and is a director of Goldstein Properties UK. Madden was also a director of the Christle owned Katava Capital.
Christle, Sutcliffe and Coughal are also directors of Fane Investments which is wholly owned by Goldstein Properties which is registered as an Irish Collective Asset-management Vehicle (ICAV) which means that it is investing money in Ireland mostly for companies and persons based overseas who can avail both of attractive tax concessions and anonymity.
The asylum gravy train has obvious attractions in that regard especially as it involves absolutely nothing in the way of productive engagement and little or no risk. Interestingly, the first secretary of Fane Investments was Dwyer’s company Millbank Trustees and Sinéad Fennelly was its first director. Is not the world full of such happy coincidences?