To visit the domain Ammado.com is to enter a world of workout supplements, male enhancement devices, sleep gadgets, weight loss pills and testosterone boosters; a cornucopia of self-improvement aids in tubs and blister packs promising to develop, swell and bulk up brain power, sexual performance and muscle tone.

Such sites proliferate on the internet. But in Ammado’s case it is quite the revamp from its previous incarnation as a hub of online philanthropy.

Championed in its prime as the “Facebook for charities”, all traces of the social network set up by tech businessman Peter Conlon in 2005 to fundraise for non-governmental organisations (NGOs) — from the Red Cross to Save the Children — have been wiped clean, including the charitable slogan “your way to make a difference”, which would arguably work on the new look site.

The web address changed hands last July, around 18 months after a notice appeared on the Ammado homepage that Myles Kirby of Kirby Healy Chartered Accountants had been appointed Official Liquidator of Pembroke Dynamic Internet Services Ltd and that the company had ceased trading.

“Accordingly, please note that no further donations should be made to charities via Ammado through this website or otherwise,” it said.

An apparent €4 million black hole in the Ammado accounts triggered the collapse of Conlon’s charity fundraising venture, putting paid to his social entrepreneurship and short-changing many good causes in the process.

The tech magnate’s downfall has been spectacular and well documented. Conlon spent a year in a Swiss prison for embezzlement following his arrest in Zurich three days before Christmas in 2017.

Out of jail, Conlon is now facing into a second bout of legal wrangling back in Ireland. High Court proceedings have been brought against the 65-year-old by liquidator Myles Kirby. The stakes are high as Kirby is trying to lift the corporate veil and hold the father of four personally liable for the debts of his company. The liquidation proceedings are being funded by the Revenue Commissioners.

The Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE), the state’s corporate watchdog, was also aboard as a notice party to Kirby’s action. Until yesterday, when barrister Aillil O’Reilly, acting for the ODCE, informed the court that the Director was bowing out of the case with the consent of the other parties. This did not come as a surprise. The move had been flagged in court last July. It means that Conlon will not face fresh criminal charges. O’Reilly wasn’t explicit in explaining the rationale for the watchdog’s departure. He simply informed Justice Leonie Reynolds that it had been established that Conlon had been convicted and sentenced in Switzerland, suggesting that the ODCE believes there would be an element of double jeopardy in pursuing the tech innovator again in any criminal capacity.

After a one-off appearance as a litigant in person last June, Conlon hired solicitor Robert Dore to represent him in the proceedings brought by the liquidator. Dore’s previous clients include the family of murdered French woman Sophie Toscan du Plantier and Galway priest Fr Kevin Reynolds, who successfully sued RTE for defamation over false abuse allegations contained in the controversial 2011 Prime Time documentary Mission to Prey.

Yesterday Dore flagged to the court that he would be making a “complex” voluntary discovery request against Kirby in the coming days. The liquidator’s lawyers said they were keen to “press on” with the case.

The case holds a promise of intrigue, from alleged human rights abuses in Zurich to a possible mystery €30 million Ammado benefactor from Nigeria, with royal connections, waiting in the wings to  help Conlon. The Leitrim entrepreneur denies wrongdoing and claimed he was pressured into making confessions to Swiss police. 

But in essence, his defence is technical and prosaic. Conlon claims the company in liquidation, Pembroke Dynamic, had an extremely limited remit, providing employment services to other Ammado companies, and was not a vehicle for fraud.

The “entrepreneur of no fixed abode” is fighting back in an effort to salvage his reputation and his dwindling assets. Accepting defeat, it seems, is not in the businessman’s bones.

Real products, real money

Originally from Carrick-on-Shannon, Conlon has lived in Dublin since the 1970s when he moved to the capital to train as an accountant with Ernst & Young. Gifted with exceptional drive, he also completed a business degree, qualified as a barrister and joined the Industrial Development Authority of Ireland (IDA ) in 1979. It was there that he met his future business partner Patrick Rainsford.

Rapid expansion was a feature of Conlon and Rainsford’s success story. An early enterprise MV Technology, an optical inspection solution for electronics manufacturers such as Siemens and Nokia, was just five years old when it was bought by Hewlett Packard subsidiary Agilent Technologies in 2001 for more than €100 million, a deal that made them both rich. Conlon was believed to have netted around €20 million from the sale.

 Together they founded several other companies including software firm Emuse Technologies and Xsil which cut silicon wafers for chipmakers, providing the kind of technology that allowed mobile phones and mp3 players to get smaller and more sophisticated. Started in 2001, Xsil had headquarters in Dublin’s Pearse Street Enterprise Centre along with offices in the UK, the USA, Japan, and Taiwan.

With Xsil, he announced third year profits of €11 million following two years of losses amounting to €14.5 million. By that stage, the company employed 120 people.

These were top tier tech enterprises. The fact Xsil and MV Technology had a manufacturing core placed their founders in a league above the Wild West, smoke and mirrors speculators behind some dotcom era ventures.

Conlon was a visible and accessible leader, not the kind of boss who would hideout in his office. A former employee remembers the culture at Xsil as being nurturing and driven by qualifications and expertise.

“Conlon was a nice person to deal with. He was never rude, he was never pushy. It didn’t matter what level you were at,” the source recalled. Some of the other managers were seen as more difficult. “Maybe he hired them to be pricks so he didn’t have to be. It is a leadership style, although I can’t say in this case it was deliberate.”

Keen to be ahead of the curve, Conlon spotted an opportunity to turn his leisure interest into a metaphor about business and the pioneering spirit, speculating on camera that he was probably one of the first Nordic walkers in Ireland.

A prolific networker who was regularly seen at first Tuesday tech events, Conlon spent much of his time travelling for work and ploughed most of his money back into his own business ventures.

There were exceptions, of course. He splashed out on an Audi TT convertible and made forays into the property market during the Celtic tiger real estate bubble. In 2003, he spent €5.1 million on a five bedroomed home on St Mary’s Road in Ballsbridge, briefly raising his property portfolio in the Dublin 4 area to three houses.

Conlon was typically described in the media as a serial entrepreneur. He received due credit for his accomplishments. In 2003, he made the Sunday Times rich list. The following year, he was named Industry Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young (now EY) for his work at Xsil.

A brief video profile, shot in advance of the awards ceremony, filmed the businessman Nordic walking in a suburban Dublin park with hiking boots and poles, not unlike ski poles, at 07.45am.

Keen to be ahead of the curve, Conlon spotted an opportunity to turn his leisure interest into a metaphor about business and the pioneering spirit, speculating on camera that he was probably one of the first Nordic walkers in Ireland. “I was in Hamburg six months ago, there was nobody doing Nordic walking. Now there are many, many people doing it,” he said.

He described himself and Xsil as “innovative entrepreneurs” adding that he did not want to tie that label to the innovation of products, it was more about introducing new products to new markets effectively and profitably.

When he won the EY award, surrounded by family and colleagues at a blacktie dinner, Conlon noted: “At least they can say business is not all dirty. It’s not all about brown paper bags, planning permissions. Some businesses are about creating value using intellectual skills from a small island off the west coast of Europe and trying to dominate niche markets worldwide.”

Arguably at 50 years old, Conlon had reached the pinnacle of his success. Rather than sit back and enjoy his personal fortune, he decided to reinvent himself and apply his tech talents to philanthropy.

The business of philantrophy

Ammado Internet Services, later known as Pembroke Dynamic Internet Services, was established in 2005 as part of a scheme to build a global technology platform for the charity sector. Conlon’s vision was to provide a world class, cloud-based FinTech solution to help NGOs up their game at fundraising.

“We wanted to create a location where non-profits, be they large organisations such as the World Food Programme or small ones such as a local GAA club in Mayo, can create a web presence,” he told Silicon Republic, the Dublin technology website.

Never short of ambition, he saw Ammado as being more than just an online facility for non-profit organisations in the twenty first century. He envisaged a revolutionary social network that had the potential to connect people and open up new revenue streams for charities around the world.

Founded before Twitter even existed and when sites like Facebook and Bebo were beginning to rocket in popularity, the concept felt fresh.

Conlon’s track record, tireless commitment, and networking skills meant he succeeded in drawing thousands of non-profit organisations to his platform and a host of corporate benefactors such as Google, Coca-Cola, Nestle, Adidas and KPMG to name a few.

When it was finally operational, millions of euro in donations poured through the cloud-based system. Ammado ran large scale charity campaigns and sold pre-paid donation gift cards allowing recipients to choose where to pledge their money.

One source described the atmosphere in the Dublin office as being like a tech start-up. It was open plan. There were no landlines. Everyone used Skype.

There were innovations on the development side, particularly in the realm of micro-philanthropy, traditionally the preserve of chuggers and supermarket bucket collections. Conlon’s team devised a software payment system, available in 33 currencies, which was suitable for the smallest of donations and could sit on any website or mobile device. That involved cutting deals with credit card companies. Ammado’ s services were also offered as a generic white label for non-profits giving them the power of the underlying platform with their own branding layered on top.

As chief executive, Conlon built up an international staff of around 20 people, some of whom were based in a Dublin office above Milano’s pizza chain on Baggot Street. But the reach of Ammado went further than that.

There were development hubs in the Czech Republic and Serbia. Pembroke Dynamic was one of four subsidiaries in the broader Ammado Group headed up by a Swiss parent company, Ammado AG.

One source described the atmosphere in the Dublin office as being like a tech start-up. It was open plan. There were no landlines. Everyone used Skype. “It was very relaxed. Nobody was in a suit. There were plenty of empty desks, ready for expansion,” he recalled.

In order to handle donations, Ammado established a charitable foundation in 2008 with the help of Arthur Cox solicitors. The first trustees were Peter Conlon, his son Peter Daire Conlon, and Polish lawyer Dr. Anna Kupka.

Kupka was an old hand in Conlon’s business history. The pair worked closely together at Xsil. The system was supposedly designed so that donations could be held temporarily by the foundation until the money was passed on to a designated charity.

Ammado made money on its services through a handling charge of 5 per cent, an administrative charge of 2.5 per cent and through advertising.

Approximately €28 million was pumped into developing the business. A considerable amount came from Conlon’s own pocket, a testament to his own self-belief and his faith in the business model.

Help me, help you

From the beginning, Ammado spawned puff pieces on social entrepreneurship. Conlon was now in that philanthropic space where many in the media go soft over conscious capitalists presenting cool new ideas to help people and change the world.

In 2009, with charitable donations in freefall due to the recession, the business was described as a “heroic online community of fundraising. It will open your eyes . . . and your wallet”.

That same year, the firm was a finalist in the Irish Technology Leaders Silicon Valley Awards along with blue energy firm Wavebob and OpenHydro, other big idealistic enterprise ideas that later fell asunder, the latter in an expensive courtroom blow up.

Back then he had cited Kill Bill 2 as his favourite film, this time he picked The Shawshank Redemption, a popular choice for businessmen who want to show they have heart.

“People are less likely to hurt each other when they know each other better,” Conlon told The Sunday Times, disclosing his touchy-feely side while speaking on intolerance.

Where was the hardnosed businessman who had five years earlier in 2004 said: “If you’re going to build a better mousetrap, you better really have a passion to kill mice, because if you cannot execute, you will not succeed.”

Back then he had cited Kill Bill 2 as his favourite film, this time he picked The Shawshank Redemption, a popular choice for businessmen who want to show they have a heart.

Not that the newspaper was fully buying into the new softer Conlon. “Do not be fooled by the patter…He is still a red-blooded capitalist and intends for Ammado to be a profit-making enterprise,” journalist Mark Paul wrote.

For some, it was Conlon’s unshakeable belief that Ammado would succeed which was the root of its downfall. “There was something of the vocational about it and that was the problem. He thought that if he could just get the charities on board, the money would come later,” said one source. “He kept piling his own money in.”

Conlon, it seems, really thought he could help.

Fatal flaws

While Ammado finally found external backers in 2012, Irish American investor John Ryan and Belgian private equity firm Saffelberg Investments, the financial breakthrough never came.

Not everyone bought into the concept. One tech industry observer, who had minor dealings with Conlon, found him to be a nice man but thought his pitch was overhyped, “lightweight, puff pastry” stuff.

“This earth-shattering charity platform? The Ammado way? I thought it was dreadful. It seemed implausible Ammado would become as big as Facebook or Bebo. It was all very thrilling, slick and well-presented but it wasn’t particularly unique. There were bigger beasts on the block.”

As the recession dug in its heels, Conlon experienced his share of failures. Having enjoyed rapid success, Xsil suffered a dramatic reversal of fortune in 2008 resulting in substantial layoffs and ultimately receivership. There was acrimony too as staff fought for redundancy rights.

While Conlon could still be found sharing a stage with the then UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, arguably what had given Ammado the edge – the tech magnate’s early adoption of social media – had been lost over time. The world had caught up.

Conlon kept plugging away at Ammado, accruing accolades and awards for innovation. In its latter years, there were tie-ins with Adidas, basketball’s NBA and UFC’s mixed martial arts.  The business supported an all-star tribute to the late singer David Bowie in New York streamed worldwide in exchange for charitable donations.

While Conlon could still be found sharing a stage with the then UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, arguably what had given Ammado the edge – the tech magnate’s early adoption of social media – had been lost over time. The world had caught up.

And his corporate ambition cost the company dearly. By early 2016, the Irish subsidiary Pembroke had accrued losses of €19.4 million.

One observer reckoned, retrospectively, that the model could only be sustainable with annual revenues in the order of €100 million plus a year, particularly as Conlon appeared to be paying top dollar for software engineering talent.

The taxman cometh

On the 5th September 2017, the axe looked set to fall as the Revenue Commissioners launched a wind-up petition of Ammado’s main Irish company Pembroke Dynamic Internet Services over outstanding debts of €400,000.

Ammado responded to the Revenue’s strike by seeking the appointment of Neil Hughes of Baker Tilly as examiner in a last ditch bid to salvage the company. Examinership, when granted, gives troubled businesses up to 100 days of court protection from creditors; time to bring in new investors, restructure and negotiate debt write downs.

Papers filed in support of the petition claimed Ammado, rebranded in 2017 as Pembroke, had been profitable since the end of 2013. Conlon argued, on affidavit, that the company was part of a larger group.

If this one firm failed the reputational damage would bring the rest of the enterprise down with it. He said he had reached a settlement with Revenue and that the company’s financial problems stemmed from a delay in rolling out its new technology platform.

An independent expert report by an accountant found Pembroke had a reasonable prospect of survival if it was restructured.

The petition was shot down in November.  For one, the finances were in a mess. But how bad of a mess would only be discovered later.

The mystery of the missing tycoon

Inside Ammado, all was not well. The company was being contacted about significant shortfalls in the sums of monies owed by the company to non-profit organisations. Conlon reassured staff that he was engaged in a round of significant fundraising and that all payments would be discharged once this was complete. 

It seems any charities that contacted the company looking for information about missing donations were dealt with by Conlon directly.

Unlike Ireland, the prosecutor’s office III of the Canton of Zurich could hold Conlon in custody for up to 6 months while it considered bringing criminal charges.

He had let it be known in the office that he was going skiing over the winter break. Conlon had been living in Switzerland since 2012.

On the 22nd December 2017, he flew from London to Zurich where he was due to meet Lena Jansen, a senior staff member of Ammado AG. There was nothing unusual about any of this. Except in this instance, he never showed up. Nor did he ring to cancel the appointment.  He simply vanished.

Jansen soon got word that Conlon was being questioned by the Swiss authorities.  Prompted by a criminal complaint from the Red Cross, Zurich’s economic crime unit – a speciality in a city famed as a global centre of finance and banking – was investigating allegations of embezzlement and unfair business dealings since October 2017.

Unlike Ireland, the prosecutor’s office III of the Canton of Zurich could hold Conlon in custody for up to 6 months while it considered bringing criminal charges.

Letters sent to his home on St Mary’s Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4 were returned undelivered. Ammado staff and Peter’s brother Michael Conlon had not been able to contact him for a number of weeks.

Jansen passed on the shocking news of Conlon’s arrest to the Dublin office via Skype over the Christmas period. However, there was still a degree of uncertainty about his circumstances. The combination of the holidays and the businessman’s radio silence left enough room for doubt and for rumours to circulate about his motives, moves and whereabouts.

There were telling signs however. His mobile phone was off. More significantly, after December 22nd Conlon had not tried to access the company’s IT system, which was highly unusual.

By early in the new year, there was still no confirmation of the tech magnate’s whereabouts. The Dublin office learned that a director of a Swiss company linked to Ammado AG was now seeking the charity tech boss as a matter of urgency.

Letters sent to his home on St Mary’s Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4 were returned undelivered. Ammado staff and Peter’s brother Michael Conlon had not been able to contact him for a number of weeks.

As January progressed, Andrea Taormina was mentioned as Conlon’s Swiss legal representative. Back in Dublin, Ammado staff were advised by lawyers Hoey and Denning Solicitors to halt all payments from company accounts and to cancel and refund any charitable donations.

Missing money and freezing orders

The plug finally came out of the wall on the 22nd January 2018 when Myles Kirby, of Kirby Healy chartered accountants, was appointed liquidator.

Having reviewed the company books and records, one of his first moves was to secure a freezing order, stopping Conlon from reducing his assets or moving them out of the jurisdiction.

While there was increasingly strong evidence that Conlon was banged up abroad, including efforts by the Swiss Department of Justice to track down company bank statements, in legal terms his whereabouts was still not a certified fact.

As Conlon was accused of very serious misconduct, the court was told there was a real risk of asset dissipation. Kirby was pointing his finger at the businessman on counts of reckless trading, fraudulent trading and misfeasance in running the company.

Philanthropic gifts were being lodged in the company’s Ulster Bank accounts in circumstances where donors believed the money was bound for the Ammado Foundation.

The court heard a preliminary review of the firm’s records by Kirby showed that Pembroke had received €5.8 million of donations between March 2016 and September 2017. Close to €400,000 had landed over the Christmas period alone.

Remarkably for a company handling such large sums of money, there was no financial controller in charge of the accounts. That task was left to Conlon himself.

Kirby then outlined a litany of serious alleged discrepancies to the High Court. He said he had discovered there was no structure separating company funds from charitable funds.

Philanthropic gifts were being lodged in the company’s Ulster Bank accounts in circumstances where donors believed the money was bound for the Ammado Foundation.

Pooling cash was at odds with the Ammado Principles and Standard Compliance documents which stipulated: “donation proceeds are not intermingled with Ammado operating finances – instead they are forwarded directly from RBW Worldpay to dedicated bank accounts owned and controlled by the Ammado Foundation, a trust established separate to Ammado”.

How far this was from the truth was evidenced in the fact that at the time of liquidation, the foundation did not have its own bank accounts. They had been shut down by Ulster Bank. Cynically, an “alias” was placed on the company accounts in the name of the Ammado Foundation presumably to give the illusion that financial Chinese walls were in place, the court heard.

Misappropiation

But these accounting irregularities were dwarfed by the discovery a week into the liquidation that €3.8 million in charitable donations appeared to have been misappropriated. On review, that figure would rise to around  €4 million.

Vast sums of money going through the Ammado system were allegedly not passed on to the designated charities.  In 2017 alone, at least €1.85 million was withheld from charities. The UNHCR, the Red Cross and Save the Children, some of the biggest not for profits in the world, were affected by the shortfall.

The insurmountable shortfall suggested Conlon was a “dishonest and untrustworthy” operator, the court heard.

The deficit at the point of liquidation was more than ten times greater than the sum of €357,039.86 held in the company’s bank accounts. It seemed the charities affected were going to have to queue up for a share of the crumbs.

The insurmountable shortfall suggested Conlon was a “dishonest and untrustworthy” operator, the court heard.

Having launched an extensive forensic review of the accounts, it quickly became apparent to Kirby that Ammado was secretly using the donations to prop up the day to day operations of the company, including staff costs.

To a lesser extent the court heard Conlon, as a company director, allegedly embezzled substantial sums of money to cover personal expenses including credit card bills.

As of the 1st January 2017, a sum of approximately €1.9 million was due to charities from Ammado, the court heard. A year later, that figure had more than doubled.

Unsurprisingly, this startling deficit in Ammado’s accounts had not featured in the failed examinership petition before the High Court several months earlier despite the fact Conlon had a duty to disclose all relevant matters in his quest for protection.

It was becoming increasingly apparent the extent to which Conlon had been living on borrowed time.

From April 2017, a who’s who of global charities, their agents and corporate donors had been writing to the business looking for refunds; Caritas, the Arsenal Foundation, the UNHCR, Glaxo Smith Kline, the Save the Children Fund, Friends of Barefoot College International, the New Zealand Red Cross.

The court heard Kupka, a company shareholder, began to express her concerns to Conlon. She wanted to know why the company had changed names and why she had been contacted by the Red Cross and the Zurich prosecutor asking where the money had gone.

Some of the correspondence was opened in court. On the 22nd May 2017 the American Red Cross wrote to Ammado requesting full payment of the sum of €186,734 along with any additional amounts owing. The letter stated that Ammado was no longer authorised to collect funds on behalf of the charity. 

There were fears at the outset of the liquidation that as many as 700 charities might be affected by the shortfall. The number now exceeds 850.

Revenue’s strike to shut down the business the previous September appears to have spooked Conlon who complained in an internal email to a senior staff member: “Have we moved all registrations into AT the Revenue are really pushing it”.

The court heard claims the tech magnate started restructuring the business in late 2017, hollowing out assets and moving the intellectual property to a shelf entity Ammado Technology, understood by the liquidator to be “AT”, a company with no debts that had never traded. There were alleged attempts to set up bank accounts linked to “AT” in different countries. A Morgan Stanley account in New York was successfully opened on the 17th November 2017.

The court heard Kupka, a company shareholder, began to express her concerns to Conlon. She wanted to know why the company had changed names and why she had been contacted by the Red Cross and the Zurich prosecutor asking where the money had gone.

Around this time Conlon began circulating a pitch to prospective investors titled “Syndicate Investment Update and Summary 6 December 2017” advising that “going forward” Ammado Technology, a company that had never traded, would generate all revenues from the Ammado platform and products.

In it, he listed a number of purported investors and advisers including a former senior drinks industry executive, a Hong Kong based philanthropist and fintech executive who said, when contacted, that he had not been involved with Ammado since 2015 when he had carried out four days of paid consulting work.

The money trail

Kirby began to follow the money trail. Where had the missing donations gone?

A review of the finances for 2017 showed that €801,524 was paid in salaries, €119,352 in rent and €105,674 in legal fees. In addition, the company transferred €248,152 to its Swiss sister company Ammado AG.

To put these sums in perspective, Ammado’s actual revenue from commissions was €439,165 over the year. The business had retained losses of €19.4 million and was hopelessly insolvent.

Then there was the personal stuff including rent payments  of €39,837 allegedly benefitting Conlon.

Two days before he was arrested in Switzerland, the businessman allegedly used €25,000 of company funds to part-settle a personal debt owed to the Irish wing of US debt recovery giant Cabot. There were further allegations that the businessman had been dipping into company funds.

A woman he was said to be romantically involved with, called Kathrina Mueller, was allegedly paid sums of up to €40,000 from company coffers according to Kirby’s affidavit opened in court. This also said payments amounting to €5,000 were allegedly directed to his daughter in the UK and another €20,000 was apparently used to settle a legal bill with LK Shields Solicitors in 2016.

Both Cabot and LK Shields had launched legal actions against Conlon. The law firm was allegedly owed €143,000 for litigation work related to an Isle of Man trust.

Offshore trusts

It would be many months before Conlon, festering in a jail abroad, would be in a position to fully address the claims set out against him. Or confirm the extent of his assets. Although his predicament did not stop him writing a letter from prison to the High Court in Dublin last October complaining that his reputation had suffered “severe damage” as a result of the investigation.

He asked for all freezing orders on his assets to be lifted urgently so that he could access money to fund his defence but with no joy.

Apart from his Dublin 4 home, the businessman was understood to own another Ballsbridge property jointly with his wife along with a Zurich Life pension, a Department of Enterprise pension, a savings policy worth €125,000 held by Clinch Wealth Management, shares in a number of companies, bank funds and whatever was held in a secret Isle of Man trust, known as the Cadogan Settlement.

According to a report of the Swiss proceedings, his lawyer Andrea Taormina described Conlon as “almost unrecognisable” to how he had appeared in photos circulating on the internet before his arrest.

The trust was set up to benefit Conlon and his family and has proven an area of interest in the liquidation process.

Days after Kirby’s appointment as liquidator, the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE) was all over Ammado. The watchdog seized company books and records on 1 February 2018 and proceeded to interview staff. The auditor of the collapsed business, MBM Chartered Accountants also furnished records to the ODCE. Unusually there was a disclaimer attached. The audit did not express a view on the financial statements, which had been signed by Conlon, the court heard.

It was at this point that  the ODCE was attached as a notice party to the High Court insolvency proceedings. Conlon and Ammado were the subjects of parallel investigations in Ireland and Switzerland. Even the London Metropolitan Police got involved following a complaint made to them by the charity Save the Children UK. 

Now that the corporate watchdog has decided to bow out of the case, an application will be made under the Police (Property) Act 1897 before the District Court in the coming weeks, to determine the rightful owner of those seized documents.

While the Charities Regulator was also alerted, the oversight body opted not to participate in the liquidation case. As Ammado was not technically a charity, the business did not fall under the regulator’s purview.

Late last November, nearly a year after his arrest, Conlon pleaded guilty to multiple counts of embezzlement and various mismanagement charges.  He was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, with two years suspended. He was banned from returning to Switzerland for five years and was found liable for the cost of the prosecution, which was covered by confiscating around €3,000 from a Swiss bank account and by cashing in a Zurich Life Insurance policy worth close to €50,000.

According to a report of the Swiss proceedings, his lawyer Andrea Taormina described Conlon as “almost unrecognisable” to how he had appeared in photos circulating on the internet before his arrest. He looked old and had lost twenty kilograms in prison. 

He did not know whether his girlfriend, who was living in Zurich, would come with him or what he would live on. It was noted that the Irish state pension was low.

The indictment found the Ammado Group had expenditures of around €6 million from 2015 to 2017 with €1.84 million of that spent on the maintenance and development of the IT platforms. Taormina said Conlon was actually a “good hearted person” who had not personally benefited from the money. He had been driven by a moral duty to work for the needy. 

The process had to be translated, because Conlon said he spoke no German. The court heard after his release he intended to move to Paris or London. He did not know whether his girlfriend, who was living in Zurich, would come with him or what he would live on. It was noted that the Irish state pension was low.

Having notched up a year of served time in a Swiss prison, the tech boss was released within weeks of his conviction.

The return of Peter Conlon

Unfazed by his own decision to plead guilty in Switzerland to the embezzlement of around €4 million, Conlon took an axe to Kirby on his return to Ireland in June 2019.

The businessman, turned up in court looking tanned and healthy and accused the accountant of gross negligence, claiming that he had gone way beyond his remit as liquidator. He said Krirby had unlawfully extended his reach beyond Pembroke, a company with no realisable assets, into other entities in the Ammado group.

Representing himself, he informed Justice Leonie Reynolds that he wanted all freezing orders on his assets lifted. He also questioned how the accountant had been able to draw such drastic conclusions about the workings of Ammado within days of his appointment.

He took issue with claims that he had used any charitable funds for his own personal benefit, a claim he resolutely denies.

In an interview last summer, Conlon told The Sunday Business Post that he had hand-delivered a criminal complaint against Kirby to Garda Commissioner Drew Harris. When Kirby Healy Accountants were asked for comment recently, a spokesperson said they had not been notified of Conlon’s garda complaint.

Conlon claims that not only has he been wronged in a number of ways but that he has been hampered in his defence, first because the proceedings were not properly served on him in jail and second because he was allegedly deprived access to company emails and records.

That amounts to two family properties in Ballsbridge, which may or may not be encumbered, a six figure savings plan and whatever is held in the secret Isle of Man trust.

In an affidavit, sworn in a notary’s office in Beaulieu- sur-Mer on the French Riviera last April, Conlon also complained of post-traumatic stress disorder. 

He claims he confessed to the Swiss authorities only after being held in 23-hour lock-up for nearly a year. This is apparently the subject of a report being prepared for submission to the Irish Government and the European Commissioner for Human Rights.

Unable to pay for treatment since leaving jail, he said he turned to Kriya yoga and “transformative meditation” for respite.

It was in this context that he described himself as an “entrepreneur of no fixed abode” and gave an alumni address from Stanford University as a point of contact.

While a full hearing of the liquidation action is unlikely before next year, a Kirby victory would mean that what is left of the millionaire’s nest egg would be smashed open for the benefit of his creditors, including the charities that lost out.

That amounts to two family properties in Ballsbridge, which may or may not be encumbered, a six figure savings plan and whatever is held in the secret Isle of Man trust. There is a strong chance the cost of the legal proceedings would absorb much of the gains.

There is also a strong possibility Kirby will push for High Court orders restricting or disqualifying Conlon from acting as a company director for up to ten years. At the age of 65 that could be enough to take the tech innovator off the pitch for good.