His son, Morgan McSweeney, a British Labour Party strategist, was appointed to one of the most senior advisory roles in the UK government last October

The colourful past of the father of the most powerful Irish man in Britain

Michael OFarrell

15/10/2024

The father of the Cork man who has just become the most powerful unelected person in Britain was once arrested and charged with a £1.2m (€1.4m) luxury car scam, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Tim McSweeney – father of Downing Street’s new Chief of Staff, Morgan McSweeney – also has a criminal assault conviction related to an incident involving his son. The behind-the-scenes rise of Morgan McSweeney from a small-town upbringing in Macroom in Co. Cork to Keir Starmer’s right-hand man in Downing Street has been the subject of endless fascination.

This intrigue has been amplified by the fact that the notoriously private 47-year-old had been virtually unknown until he masterminded the Labour Party’s landslide general election victory in July. But now an MoS review of publicly-available historical records can shed new light on the upbringing and childhood of Morgan McSweeney.

Those records show his father Tim McSweeney – an accountant by profession – became embroiled in an extraordinary criminal and civil case during his son’s formative teenage years. The international tale of deceit is laced with compelling characters that include an attractive ex-model with an exclusive Chelsea address and superb establishment contacts and a shadowy European security expert with an assumed name who was wanted by police in Belgium. The former model, Amanda Forshall, was in the business of supplying houses, antiques, fine art and exotic sports cars to wealthy Japanese clients.

In 1990, she even sold a Bugatti Royal Kellner – one of the world’s most expensive cars – for $15m. That sale involved the now-deceased Lord Montague of Beaulieu, an infamous bisexual car enthusiast.

The mysterious Belgian, meanwhile, was known as William Hoogenbruggen, though his real name was Fabien Sargent.

Astonishingly, these characters all wound up together in Macroom in 1990 where Tim McSweeney managed the Irish Nationwide Building Society from a premises in Castle Street. At the time, Tim McSweeney was also a partner with O’Brien, Cahill & Co Chartered Accountants, a firm with several offices throughout Cork County and the city. But he had other interests too. The first public indication of a relationship between Tim McSweeney and William Hoogenbruggen, aka Fabien Sargent, came in a Sunday World article in February 1990. At the time, Morgan McSweeney, a sports-obsessed teenager, who did not particularly excel at school, would have been just 13.

According to the article, the pair had teamed up to set up a Macroom factory where Lamborghinis and other exotic cars were to be bullet-proofed with armoured plating for VIPs.

‘The US Justice Department are very interested in taking about 1,000 cars with around 700 for South America,’ the Belgian told the newspaper. Tim McSweeney said: ‘Saudi princes are another great market for bulletproof cars’.

The article included a photo of a Lamborghini about to be bullet-proofed at the new Macroom plant but it did not mention the name of the new company behind the enterprise. But Company Registrations Office (CRO) records show that just two months previously, in December 1989, a new firm called Lambo Motors Ltd was incorporated at the Castle Street address used by Tim McSweeney

From the beginning, Tim McSweeney was a director of Lambo Motors Ltd while others associated with the firm included Hoogenbruggen, aka Fabien Sargent and a third individual called Gerard Walsh. Aside from his role at Lambo Motors, Gerard Walsh is himself a notorious figure who was once dubbed a ‘fraudster’ by the courts in Jersey, though he has always denied any wrongdoing.

CRO records show things developed quickly at Lambo Motors. Too quickly in fact. Within 10 months the firm would be in receivership.

But in that brief period, Lambo Motors got Tim McSweeney and Gerard Walsh into a legal and criminal quagmire that lasted nearly a decade and saw them both jailed on bail in Brixton prison.

CRO paperwork shows that six months after Lambo Motors was incorporated, Tim McSweeney signed a letter of undertaking with the Bank of Ireland to agree to a £200,000 line of credit secured against a local property.

At the time, his brother Michael McSweeney – an uncle to the then 13-year-old Morgan – was a manager with Bank of Ireland in Bandon. Two weeks after securing the BOI funds, Tim McSweeney signed a second document – a chattel mortgage with the Mercantile Credit Company of Ireland – relating to four Ferraris and a Lamborghini. Then, thanks to a chance encounter at a London supercar dealership and a subsequent trip to Ireland, Amanda Forstall entered the frame. 

Already notorious in car circles from her $15m Bugatti sale, she now had a new client with a special order and the money to pay for it.

In March 1992, Tim McSweeney and his co-accused were allowed to return to Ireland, pending further hearings. Later that year magistrates ruled there was a prima facia criminal case to answer. However, various delays ensued and the fraud trial did not commence until 1994 – the same year a 17-year-old Morgan McSweeney boarded a bus to emigrate to a new life in London.

Tim McSweeney, though, failed to show up for his trial and the court was informed he was ill.

But it subsequently emerged that the day after the trial began he flew to Malaga – via London – as warrants for his arrest were being issued but had not yet been served in Ireland.

Mr McSweeney returned from Spain a few days later when the arrest warrants were withdrawn and ultimately the trial was dropped by the prosecution in March 1994. But Tim McSweeney’s family were still punished for his failure to attend. In April 1994 the courts ruled that the £25,000 bail money his brother Dennis had paid would be forfeited. 

Meanwhile, back in Ireland, the civil judgement against Tim McSweeney and Gerard Walsh was contested in the Supreme Court which, in 1998, upheld the original High Court ruling. Even after the Lamborghini case concluded, Tim McSweeney still occupied a life that sailed perilously close to controversy.

In 1999 he surfaced in the midst of what was then dubbed Sunderland’s biggest financial scandal when financial consultant Anthony Heald fled owing £30m to investors. 

In pursuing Heald, investors traced him to Cork where Tim McSweeney, who was Heald’s accountant, acted as a go-between.

Neither Tim McSweeney nor his son Morgan responded to queries from the MoS about this article this weekend.