Dolphin execs got €1.8m loans pre-liquidation

AN Irishman who was a key figure in a now collapsed German property investment scheme was given a €1.8m director’s loan by Dolphin International Group (Dolphin IG) before he moved to take up a new position at the Dubaibased global investment arm of a Wall Street broker.

Marc Reilly, now CEO of Europe and Asia at J Streicher Global, was one of two Irish directors at Cork-based Dolphin IG.

He and fellow director and shareholder Cormac Smith each obtained loans of €1.8m from the firm in the months before it was placed in voluntary liquidation in October 2019, according to company documents seen by the Sunday Independent.

It is not known if the two loans were paid back by the men, and neither could be reached for comment.

The third director and shareholder at Dolphin IG was Charles Smethurst, who established the Dolphin Capital property investment scheme in 2008.

It took in more than €1bn from Irish, English and Asian investors who bought loan notes in the scheme over a decade. Before it collapsed last year, more than 1,800 mainly small-time Irish investors had put a total of €107m into Dolphin through a network of 144 Irish investment brokers.

Reilly’s name is understood to have appeared in statements sent by Smethurst’s lawyers to the German public prosecutor in December.

An invoice obtained by the Sunday Independent relating to one Dolphin investment showed Cork-based Dolphin IG charging Hannover-based Dolphin Capital €65,000 in “agents commission” on a single €130,000 investment.

Investors were told the money they loaned to the company would be used to acquire historic listed sites in Germany that would be renovated and sold as residential units.

Many investors lost their pension pots or other substantial lump sums they invested in the scheme.