The banker, the mayor’s girl and the trainer who rode off with $1.75m
AN Irish horse trainer who was ordered to pay $1.75m (€1.6m) to his former employer after being sued for making money under the table is being aggressively pursued for the debt.
Waterford native Declan Orpen was sued by ex-employer Steven Rattner, an investment banker who led ex-President Barack Obama’s restructuring of the US car industry.
Orpen, who once co-owned a champion showjumper with Irish Olympic team member Greg Broderick, was found by the New York Supreme Court to have taken kickbacks from contractors hired to work at Rattner’s Monomy Farm.
He was also found by Judge O. Peter Sherwood to have concealed commissions from the sale of horses and side payments from auctioneers hired to find accommodation for Rattner’s employees. Orpen managed the day-to-day operation of the farm but also oversaw building work and bought and sold horses for Rattner.
Judge Sherwood ruled that Orpen failed to disclose his financial interest in certain contractors, received and concealed ‘kickback payments from contractors and realtors’ and accepted side payments over the purchase of investment horses.
The judge was responding to a motion by the plaintiffs for default judgment after Orpen failed to reply to the complaint. Under local law, if a defendant fails to answer a complaint, he admits liability.
Orpen, once a fixture on the New York social scene when he dated the daughter of former mayor Michael Bloomberg, was ordered to pay $1.15m for damages caused because the work on a bridge and horse stalls at the farm was not up to code. Both had to be torn down. Orpen was also ordered to pay back $585,000 in wages and commissions paid during his employment by Mr Rattner between 2004 and 2012.
Mr Orpen has not satisfied the judgment and Mr Rattner is pursuing him. In February, the judge was asked to sign off on the appointment of a lawyer to track him down at an address in Connecticut.
In a statement, Mr Rattner’s lawyer, Joshua Reitzas told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘Our only comment at this time is that our client has a very large, unsatisfied judgment against Declan Orpen.’
Mr Orpen did not reply to repeated attempts to contact him by the MoS this week. While Mr Rattner’s lawyers believe the Irishman is in Connecticut, he and his wife have a home in Florida. It was bought by wife Cassandra Herman and her parents in 2014.
The couple married in April 2015, with a reception at Dromoland Castle in Co. Clare, just weeks before the judgment was handed down.
On his LinkedIn page, Mr Orpen describes himself as a horse owner and trainer at Mr Broderick’s Ballypatrick Stables.
Mr Broderick, who competed in last year’s Rio Olympic Games, told the MoS that Orpen did not work at his stables, and has never done so.
The only relationship they had was the co-ownership of a horse, Broderick said. With Broderick on the saddle, the horse, Arraghbeg Clover, won the 2013 World Championship for four-year-olds. It was sold later that year for €400,000.
Work was not up to code and had to be torn down