Greg Daly
Mount Argus Parish in Dublin photo: Mount Argus Parish Trócaire and an iconic Dublin parish stand to lose thousands of euro after a cash-in-transit security company in financial difficulties has been revealed to have used client money to prop up its accounts.
The chief operations officer of Business Mobile Security Services (BMSS), which trades under the name of Senaca, asked the High Court this July to liquidate the business, after an examinership process begun in 2016 saw the Revenue Commissioners receiving just 10% of the debt owed to it and unsecured creditors receiving just 5% of the €683,000 owed to them.
Last year, however, according to a report by The Currency, company management began using client funds to keep BMSS afloat, with over €1 million of client money used in just a few months. An initial investigation by chartered accountant Joe Walsh found that early estimates that the company was about €1 million in the red were almost certainly seriously understated.
He believed that the company deficit was more likely to be about €1.7 million, with about €2.5 million owed to customers.
Loss
These customers included the Congregation of the Passion at Mount Argus in Dublin, onetime home to the 19th-Century Dutch priest St Charles of Mount Argus, who are owed €49,873. It is understood that this money was needed to fund both the parish and care for 20 mainly elderly members of the congregation.
Trócaire, the Irish bishops’ relief and development agency, is also believed to have been owed over €70,000 from Trócaire boxes BMSS had collected from schools and parishes around Ireland, and that this loss has had to be reported to the charity regulator.
Other charities left stung are the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the Irish Wheelchair Association, which were owed €81,202 and €32,714 respectively.
Mr Walsh has said that Trócaire and others have made reference to his duty to investigate the actions of BMSS’s directors, and that he is “acutely aware of the potential wrongdoing”.