Couple ordered to repay €93,000 borrowed from Irish bar owner

A couple have been ordered to repay €93,000 they had borrowed from a bar owner to finance business projects that never materialised.

John McCormack, formerly the owner of McCormack Bar, had filed legal proceedings against Robert and Jane Bell in 2010 to recover a total of €174,000.

McCormack had met the Bells when he moved to Malta and set up the “McCormack” bar in St Paul's Bay. The couple had asked him to lend them cash to set up a business – initially a gym in the locality, but which later changed to managing a hotel in Cyprus.

The bar owner claimed to have allowed Robert and Jane Bell to borrow over €174,000 from him in a number of small loans. Those transactions which he gave the court documentary evidence of were: two loans of €12,000 each in 2008 for the gym/hotel business idea, €450 for vehicle repairs, another €23,500 loan in 2009 for an unspecified purpose, a further €4,000 in 2010, €14,900 in cash withdrawn from his Irish bank account between November 2009 and March 2010, €10,000 transferred directly to Jane Bell's bank account in February 2010, followed a month later by another transfer of €11,179 and a final money transfer of €4,823 in August that year. McCormack had travelled to Ireland to withdraw cash, which he had then handed over to the defendants, the court observed.

Judge Anna Felice, presiding the First Hall of the Civil Court observed that the defendants are also the subject of criminal investigations after allegedly selling a BMW, which McCormack's had entrusted to them, without his autorisation by falsifying his signature.

So much money was given to the couple that the Irishman was left unable to keep his bar in business and had to close it down. McCormack ended up borrowing €15,000 himself from family members, to be able to stay in Malta.

The Irishman went on to file a number of precautionary warrants over the defendants' property in Malta.

The court upheld McCormack's claim, however reducing the amount to €93,052, after noting that the rest of the alleged sum borrowed was made up of cash loans and stock allegedly taken by the defendants for which McCormack had no documentary evidence.

The court ordered that the costs of the case were to be borne by the defendants.