The Loot & the Loans - A Special Report, RT Investigations Unit

The Loot & The Loans - A Special Report, RT Investigations Unit 05/02/2015: The Loot & The Loans - A Special Report from RT s Investigations Unit on Prime Time Tonight, Thursday 5th February, 9.35pm, RT One.

Scattered across Ireland, customers of one subprime mortgage company are in a fight to stay in their homes. For years, the Home Funding Corporation Ltd targeted rural Ireland with quick loans at very high interest rates, mainly to cash strapped farmers. Tonight on Prime Time on RT One, the RT Investigations Unit reveals how the money behind those mortgages was the proceeds of one of Britain's largest ever tax frauds and part of a complex web that availed of legal loop holes and lax regulation here to launder the proceeds

The report reveals how the man who set up the money laundering operation still stands to benefit from the repossession of Irish homes.

Penalty interest rates were applied when payments were missed, turning relatively small loans into enormous debts. HFC's primary market was farmers with poor credit ratings who offered homes and land as security for loans. Because an asset was put up as a security, HFC was exempt from restrictions imposed on money lenders and could charge whatever interest it liked. Approximately 150 unwitting borrowers got charged interest rates of up to 28%.

One borrower signed up for a loan of £40,000 in 1997 which is now today at 1.4million. 17 years after the £40,000 was first drawn down the court proceedings are ongoing and this mortgage is clocking up interest at a rate of 28,000 a month.

Reporter Conor Ryan spoke to people who have already lost their homes and others fearful that they will be next. The company is currently seeking to repossess more than 30 homes through the High Courts and circuit courts.

Watch The Loot and The Loans - Prime Time, Thursday at 9.35pm on RT One and RT News Now

LINK:	http://www.rte.ie/about/en/press-office/press-releases/2015/0205/67813...
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