Imagine my surprise meeting Denis Barrett that I had interviewed some months earlier at the same lounge in the Dubai International Airport. What a stroke of luck! I had the pleasure of not only meeting but chatting with him for a couple of minutes. The best part of the whole encounter was that I had been reading an article about him on my flight to Dubai, talk about a pleasant surprise. Denis had just been cleared of corruption by a court ruling on the 21st of February 2020. After we got reacquainted, we spoke about the pandemic and the effect it was having on us. He jokingly commented that he was still looking for the elusive girl of his dreams.
I asked if we could talk about the case I had read about him in Brussels a few weeks earlier. He was happy to chat about it but didn’t wish to comment about the legal ruling because they might still appeal cost.
I was shocked that he was so calm about the whole ordeal; he was working on his laptop when I met him. He was working on his laptop while everyone in the lounge was sleeping between flights. He told me that he had started learning about affiliate marketing and he was coming up with a new business model on affiliate marketing for Property Agents. He further explained “We started a European multi-lingual Auction institute mirrored of that in America to offer support and education to European auctioneers to promote the auction method of marketing assets. So it is important to stay on top of our game at all times.”
It is not often you see a man that just had an excess of 34 million working instead of partying. I thought to myself, was this madness or discipline? Was he a workaholic that joke around with finding the girl of his dream to mask his lonely life of a Red Eye traveler? Or is he just driven and ambitious? I will have to wait until everything is back to normal to ask these questions. The 3rd time is the charm they say.
The article I read on the paper during my flight to Dubai was “An Irish Man Cleared of Corruption” it was published on the 22nd of February 2020.
“An Irish man had been cleared of corruption charges and his frozen assets had been returned to him.
Denis Barrett, the Irish man in question was cleared of all corruption charges by the European Court of Justice when they upheld the findings of the courts in Slovakia and Poland. The charges related to 6 development sites and 3 sites of strategic importance in which Mr. Barrett had partially or fully acquired and accumulated between 2001 and 2004. When he subsequently planned and placed it back on the market, it netted him a sum of €34,000,000.
The European court of justice then ordered the investigations of the German company that apparently applied pressure on the Polish and Slovakian officials to force Mr. Barrett into bankruptcy. They had hoped they could recoup the site costs after it emerged that Mr. Barrett had formed a second company with English, Chinese, American and Russian investors to develop the sites. But when a site valuation was not agreed on by the two companies, Mr. Barrett first company, Laurlecrest Holdings International Ltd decided to put the properties on the market to get the true market valuation. The Germany Company was attracted to the portfolio of the sites (residential, commercial, retail and industrial sites with Truck Stop/Rest). They even outbid Mr Barrett’s 2nd company Laurelcrest Middle Europe Development Ltd, by €5,000,000.
The European Court of Justice concluded that there was nothing corrupt about Mr. Barrett activities and that he had legitimately seen opportunities for site accumulations. He worked with different individual owners to acquire the sites and his foresight had generated him a legitimate reward. Mr. Barrett was in his early 30s at the time, a shroud property developer that has just been left destitute from the Global Financial Crash of 2008. He had costly legal battles; the appeals from the Slovakian and Polish government to the European court of appeals fought by his London Solicitors on a win bonus agreement. All his assets were frozen coupled with the collapse of the Irish economy and his business, it was pure grit and determination that helped him avoid bankruptcy. It is almost like a miracle.
At the hearing, his legal teams were able to offer evidence of similar developments and proven track records of similar land deals and development in Ireland, China, England, and Spain. The note and paper from his Polish legal advisor for the transactions described Mr. Barrett as a “”wybryk natury” translated as “freak of nature” workaholic. Mr. Barrett was a prolific land speculator and developer before the Global Financial Crash and the freezing of his assets by the Polish and Slovakian authorities. He continued to serve as a consultant to several reckoned developers through Europe and the Middle East on land use and large scale development.
Both the Polish and Slovakian officials have said that they are happy with the ruling. They have released all his assets, have unfrozen all his bank accounts and have welcomed him to continue doing business in their countries again. However, a statement released by Mr. Barrett’s lawyer in Brussels stated that he and all his company would cease operation in both countries. They will now be focusing on countries outside the EU trading zone, where bureaucracy and elitism have not ruined the opportunity to do business. They are looking at the UK (post-Brexit), the US, Russia, the Philippines, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.
Mr. Barrett said that all requests and inquiries should be directed to his legal team, who he thanked for their support in the 12 years legal battle.”
I hope to bump into Denis again in the future; he is such an interesting person. Hopefully, he will put the last years behind him and continue to move forward with joy and companionship in his life.
I am sharing some photographs of Denis Barrett collected from different sources
