Stormont committee told Peter Robinson due to benefit from NAMA deal

He said: “This was a success fee that was to be paid in to a dormant Danske Bank account in the Donegal Square West branch (in Belfast) and from there it was transferred to an off-shore account”.

McGuinness claimed in his evidence that he had been excluded from an important meeting with the company that eventually bought the portfolio.

Martin McGuinness has said there are “very serious questions” about what capacity Peter Robinson was acting in with regard to the Nama loan sale.

AN INQUIRY INTO Nama’s disposal of its Northern Ireland portfolio has heard an allegation that DUP leader Peter Robinson was one of five people who received a payment as a result of the deal.

“Person B is Mr Andrew Creighton, Person C is Mr David Watters, Person D is Mr Frank Cushnahan and Person E is Ian Coulter”.

Some of this money, he claimed on the Dáil record, was “reportedly earmarked for a Northern Ireland politician or political party”.

BELFAST, Sept 23 A witness has told a parliamentary inquiry in Northern Ireland that the First Minister of the British province was to receive a payment on completion of a 1.3 billion pound ($2 billion) sale of property loans to a US private equity firm.

He said he did not know in June 2013 that the former Northern Ireland Finance Minister Sammy Wilson had written to the Minister for Finance Michael Noonan stating that the U.S. law firm Brown Rudnick had a client, which was later identified as Pimco, who was interested in the Nama portfolio.

Mr McGuinness told the Stormont inquiry that “there were all sorts of meetings taking place” in relation to Nama and the subsequent transaction that he had not been aware of.

The Sinn Féin politician denied knowing anything about a memorandum of understanding that was sent to Dublin from the OFMdFM.

The inquiry, led by the Stormont Finance Committee, is investigating the £1.1bn sale of assets by NAMA, the “bad bank” in the Republic, to a USA investment fund run by Cerberus Capital worldwide previous year .

Mr Martin asked the Taoiseach if he would not accept that there was an extraordinary contrast in how the U.S. and United Kingdom authorities had responded and if he would accept that there was a light response by the Irish authorities to the sale.

He said this came from the “DUP side of the OFMDFM and did not have his consent or that of any official in his department”.

Sensational evidence from Jamie Bryson – the merits or otherwise will be established over the next few weeks and months, if not by this committee then through the courts. He has been a blogger about the NAMA deal and other property deals for some time.

He claims he has primary documentation and therefore should be heard in public.

Protesting that it should have been heard behind closed doors and a transcript published at a later date, South Down MLA Jim Wells said: “Here we have no direct evidence from Mr Bryson”.

Following his submission, MLAs voted to allow Mr Bryson to give his evidence in an open session. Once the committee decided they were going to hear the evidence, there was a certain inevitability about the sensational events that have taken place today.