EXPOSED: THE MONEYLENDER MILLIONAIRES
Family business charges 200% interest on debt
THE Irish Mail on Sunday can today reveal the millionaire lifestyle of Ireland’s most successful moneylending family.
With Christmas fast approaching and more and more struggling families turning to moneylenders, we reveal how one Cork family, the Murrays, have become rich by charging interest rates of up to 200% for small loans.
The high-cost lending is not only legal but fully licensed by the Central Bank.
However, the industry’s critics fear that it will plunge more and more struggling families into a vicious cycle of debt and borrowing.
THIS is Ireland’s most reclusive and successful moneylender - on a brief trip home from his sun-kissed Marbella mansion.
A world away from the many underprivileged Irish communities where his company makes millions by charging interest rates in excess of 200% on small cash loans, Raymond William Murray lives a life of luxury and opulence. And it’s all entirely legal. Behind high electronic security gates and pristine whitewashed walls, his lavish villa – complete with pool and live-in housekeeper – has direct, private access to the El Paraiso Golf Club.
One of Spain’s oldest and most prestigious courses, the club’s fairways extend across the base of the peaceful El Paraiso valley beneath mountains to the north and the sparkling Mediterranean to the south.
Back home on Cork’s northside, Mr Murray’s moneylending company, Marlboro Trust Ltd, occupies an ugly, sprawling warehouse perched on a drab hillside overlooking the largely deprived community of Mayfield.
The area contains the second highest concentration of local authority housing in Cork (58.6%) and has been identified as one of the State’s worst unemployment blackspots, with more than 23% of working-age inhabitants
Interest equates to an annual rate of 210%
permanently out of work. Less than 1% of the children here go on to third-level education. Golf is not a preoccupation in these parts. But the underprivileged people of this community and scores of others like it have for decades funded the golfing activities and privileged lifestyle of Mr Murray and his family.
Depending on one’s viewpoint, moneylenders like the Murrays are either considered merchants of misery who profit from the misfortunes of others – or a vital lifeline allowing people credit when they otherwise would not get it.
Either way, Marlboro Trust is certainly not suffering in the face of a deep recession.
In fact, the prevailing troubles of the main banks – two of which are closing their Mayfield branches – will likely increase the demand for Marlboro’s credit services.
The Murray family continue to make vast profits from lending. They are now among the biggest landlords in Ireland, with hundreds of rental properties to their name.
At present, Marlboro Trust – the Murray’s main holding company – is licensed by the Financial Regula- tor to give cash loans for periods of 21 days at an interest rate of 72.51% and an additional collection fee of 14 cents per euro.
This equates to an astonishing 210.7% APR – more than enough to fund a privileged lifestyle which includes several trophy homes, luxury cars and the princely Costa Del Sol villa.
Yet Mr Murray and his family have managed to remain largely anonymous. Despite running one of Cork’s top 20 companies, the family have never before been profiled in any newspaper or photographed publicly, although they are well known among Cork’s affluent merchant classes.
Now semi-retired, 84-year-old Raymond William Murray established the business from a base at No 4 Marlboro Street Cork on April Fool’s Day 1965, simply calling the company Ray Murray Ltd.
In the 1980s Mr Murray was tipped as a possible election candidate for Fianna Fáil.
However, following a 1985 Today Tonight documentary, which partly featured his business, he moved to Spain, although he still keeps a home in Cork. By the time he changed the name to Marlboro Trust in 2004, he had almost 60 collection agents (known in the business
‘Loans are usually small, in hundreds of euros’
as travellers) using a €250,000 fleet of cars collecting door-to-door repayments each week throughout the country.
Although still a director, Mr Murray handed over his shares and day-to-day control of the family business to his sons, Finbar and Kevin, and a daughter, Cathryn, between 2004 and 2011.
Today the moneylending business is run through a subsidy called Marlboro Trust (Finance) Ltd, which made loans of €5.5m in 2010 and posted a retained profit of €4.8m.
Since loans are typically small – in the hundreds of euros – the figures indicate that tens of thousands of struggling families, who could not otherwise obtain money, availed