NAMA DEVELOPERS WHO transferred assets to their spouses before the state’s ‘bad bank’ was set up are likely to escape any action, according to the Irish Daily Mail.

On Monday night, Prime Time Investigates aired a special programme focused on the lifestyles of some of the top developers who had loans transferred to NAMA and what they had done with their assets.

Some had transferred properties and lands legally to their wife’s ownership.

NAMA’s chairman Frank Daly appeared on the Prime Time special, saying that NAMA would keep pushing developers to repay their debts. Yesterday, the state agency responded to that Monday night programme saying it was pursuing developers to bring back assets which they transferred from their own names in an effort to push them beyond the scope of NAMA.

It said it had “considerable success” in doing this and had already secured agreements to reverse a total of €130m of such transfers in three cases. The names of the developers involved in those three cases have not been released.

The Irish Examiner reports that NAMA has confirmed that the majority of the top 30 developers under the agency have transferred property to their partners or family.

Economist Peter Bacon, who advised the government on setting NAMA up, told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland this morning that the state agency should treat the issue of transfers in the same way as the government belatedly treated the AIB bonus issue. He said it needs to get tougher and lay down the terms on which it does business.

He said that if NAMA was not a legal entity when the transfers were made, it could not be held to count for that.