Drumm’s wife to walk away with € 1m after bankruptcy deal in US
THE wife of disgraced Anglo Irish Bank chief David Drumm will keep approximately € 1m from her share of the couple’s assets.
As part of a bankruptcy case court deal agreed in the US, Lorraine Drumm will pay a settlement of almost € 1m to the official managing her husband’s bankruptcy case.
She will then be entitled to keep a share of the rest of the assets owned jointly with her husband.
It is estimated that once these assets have been sold, she will walk away with around € 1m.
Collapse
The deal ends any claims against Mrs Drumm that she fraudulently benefited from assets transferred to her by her husband.
Mr Drumm moved to Boston after leaving Anglo just as it was about to collapse into state ownership in 2008. He filed for bankruptcy in October 2010 and his financial affairs are under the control of a courtappointed bankruptcy trustee.
The trustee’s role is to realise cash from Mr Drumm’s assets in order to repay his creditors.
His creditors are owed some € 10.2m and include stateowned Anglo.
Now US bankruptcy judge Franck J Bailey has approved a settlement deal agreed between Mrs Drumm and Mr Drumm’s trustee.
The settlement was reached after the bankruptcy trustee Kathleen Dwyer filed a lawsuit against the Drumms last year.
She had claimed that more than € 1.1m had been fraudu- lently transferred by Mr Drumm to accounts held or coheld by his wife. The transfers put the cash beyond the reach of creditors.
Under the settlement deal the Drumms’ assets – including three luxury houses – will be sold and the proceeds split between Mrs Drumm and Mr Drumm’s creditors.
In exchange, the trustee has agreed not to sue Mrs Drumm over the alleged fraudulent transfer of cash to her by her husband.
Mrs Drumm is likely to keep more than € 1m once the family assets have been sold.
Affluent
These include their home in the affluent suburb of Wellesley in Massachusetts and their € 1.6m home in Abingdon, Malahide, in Dublin.
A house in Chatham, Cape Cod, has already been sold for € 1.8m.
Mrs Drumm will hand over slightly less than € 1m to the bankruptcy trustee to be disbursed among her husband’s creditors.
Mr Drumm’s bankruptcy trial is scheduled to take place in Boston early next year.