A sub-prime mortgage lender has admitted to inexcusable and inordinate delays in pursuing a borrower, but has denied they can be blamed on its former owner's imprisonment for fraud.
Home Funding Corporation Ltd has told the High Court it was beneficially owned by Ian Leaf until 2008. He has since changed his name to Ian Andrews.
Mr Leaf was arrested in 2004 and a year later was sentenced to ten years in jail for a £55m trading fraud committed against the UK Inland Revenue.
However, the Irish lending company he set up told Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy that Mr Leaf had no involvement in dealing with the debt it was owed by of a Roscommon couple who borrowed £40,000 in 1997 at interest rates of up to 29% APR.
The couple were later confronted with demands of €1.4m.
The lender said it would be unjust of the court to deny it the right to proceed with its repossession action.
Counsel for Home Funding Corporation Ltd, Martin Canny, said his client had not lacked candour by blaming the delays on internal issues in the company.
He said it did not need to alert the court to Mr Leaf's arrest and conviction because it was not relevant.
Mr Canny said, having reviewed the file, one of the firm's current directors, Joan Donnelly, was willing to swear an affidavit that "to the best of her knowledge the fact of Mr Leaf's imprisonment did not have an effect on the activity in these [repossession] proceedings".
He said the allegations made in this week's hearing were drawn from a RTÉ Prime Time programme which aired on 5 February.
This investigated the activities of the Home Funding Corporation and Mr Canny said the "the facts in that documentary are somewhat overstated".
Home Funding Corporation Ltd, which has changed its name to Vivier Mortgages Ltd, was contesting an attempt by the couple to have repossession proceedings struck out.
The company accepted there had been little or no activity in their case between July 2004 and February 2014 and that this was inexcusable.
Counsel for the couple, Peter Bland, said it was "beyond credibility" that Mr Leaf's arrest in the summer of 2004 and subsequent imprisonment had not been the reason for the legal action against his clients going dormant.
He said in the case where there were inexcusable and inordinate delays in progressing legal action it would be unjust on the borrowers to allow it to go to a full hearing particularly given the "unsavoury history of Mr Leaf".
"I don't have to point to the most unsavoury issues in this, a £40,000 mortgage... turns into a €1.4m claim some 17 years later," he said.
Ms Justice Kennedy has said she will deliver judgment on the application to strike out the repossession proceeding on Thursday morning.
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