An Israeli fund backs one of Ireland’s biggest landlords, but who else?

Tenants of the various subsidiaries of a fund managed by LRC Group have no idea to whom they ultimately pay rent.

Company names they know, but not the people, the faces.

While he was still a tenant of theirs, Sam Elliott was keen to find out, he says. “I absolutely would have wanted to know.”

Between January 2021 and August 2022, he rented a flat in Stanfield House, a grand redbrick with bay windows flanked by palm trees and overlooking the sea in Sandymount.

His landlord was Xerico Limited.

Elliott had tracked ownership of Xerico Limited back a bit, he says, through to Cyprus where the company was registered, and a step further back to LRC Re-1, the Luxembourg fund that owned it.

But he didn’t know that Israel-based Phoenix Financial, a big and diversified financial services group, holds about 12 percent of the shares in LRC Re-1 as part of its members’ portfolios.

Phoenix Financial is listed by the Who Profits Research Centre, a not-for-profit which tracks corporate involvement in illegal Israeli settlements.

It has highlighted, among other relationships, Phoenix Financial’s holdings – of 5 percent, as of August 2023 – in Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest private military weapons manufacturer.

That, and its stake in a large shopping centre in an East Jerusalem settlement, and its financing of renewable energy projects in Israeli settlements.

The largest shareholder in Phoenix Financial itself, since January 2025, is Affinity Partners, managed by Jared Kushner – US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, and envoy, among those pursuing the real estate development of Gaza now that the Israeli military has killed more than 75,000 of its people, and razed much of it.

Who or which entities hold the rest of the shares in LRC Re-1 – contributing to the pool of money the fund invests in real estate in Ireland and elsewhere – doesn’t seem to be public.

But Elliott wouldn’t have wanted to pay rent that flows to an entity related in any way to supporting settlements in Palestine, he says. “But how would one find that out?”

As Ireland continues to court overseas investment and private equity to pump up its private rental sector, it is becoming harder for tenants to work out who benefits from, and controls decisions around, their home.

Some changes to transparency around company ownership are imminent.

Ireland, as with other European member states, has until July to roll out a new regime around its beneficial ownership register, a database which aims to reveal, to those with access, the names of people who benefit ultimately from companies.

Meanwhile, other EU anti-money laundering rules are due to kick in that will require foreign entities owning real estate in Ireland – whether directly or through intermediaries – to report beneficial ownership information to the country’s register from July 2029.

That would theoretically make it easier to find the people behind the curtain in one place, rather than having to follow a trail of companies that own companies that own companies through a series of countries’ beneficial ownership registries.

But because this is to be rolled out as part of anti-money laundering legislation, rather than broader transparency considerations, access to the information will still be strictly limited – and not widely publicly available.

And defining and capturing the beneficial ownership of investment funds such as LRC Re-1, by nature of the way that money is pooled from so many different sources, and with management and control of the fund’s operations detached from its shareholders, can be especially difficult.

Nevertheless, the need for a brighter light on money flowing into property continues to attract attention across European cities.

In a joint declaration issued in February, European mayors of major cities – including Dublin – called on the European Commission to “improve its current legislative approach on transparency in real estate financial flows and ultimate beneficial ownership”.

Neither LRC Group nor Phoenix Financial replied to media queries about ownership and transparency, sent by email on 25 February. Phoenix Financial didn’t respond to queries about the characterisation of its involvement in illegal settlements.

A big player

LRC Group itself says on its website that it was “founded” in 1995 by Yehuda Barashi, who still oversees its business activities and investor relations.

Company documents show that entities of LRC Group serve as the general partner, investment advisor, and the alternative investment fund manager for the LRC Re-1 fund.

But tracking shareholdings for those entities through the layers leads to a law firm in Cyprus, which provides administrative services for companies and nominee shareholders and directors.

In such arrangements, the names of “nominees” appear on public company documents rather than the true beneficial owners.

There is little public information about Barashi himself.

Records from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalist’s Panama Papers database say that during the 2000s, Barashi acted as the process agent in relation to loan agreements for hotels in Germany.

He was working for – among other parties – Cypriot-Israeli real estate tycoon, and recent appointee to Trump’s Gaza-focused “Board of Peace”, Yakir Gabay, who has described a plan there for a “new Mediterranean Riviera with 200 hotels and potential islands”.

Back in Ireland, since 2018, LRC Group’s fund LRC Re-1 has gradually expanded the number of rental properties that it owns through subsidiaries, rising to more than 2,000 across the country.

As it has grown, so has scrutiny of the management of those properties.

In the Dáil, opposition TDs have criticised its evictions – especially those issued on the grounds that a Part 4 tenancy cycle has ended, rather than on grounds of sale or any tenant fault.

Properties that it buys have seen sharp increases in headline rents, with new service charges and car parking charges added on for apartments that had previously seen those included in rents.

Fiadh Tubridy, a postdoctoral researcher with Maynooth University’s Just Housing project, says that many tenants of subsidiaries of LRC Group who she has spoken to as part of her work don’t understand how the companies that they rent from are related to others – and part of a bigger structure.

It’s one symptom of the transition away from small individual landlords who are personally known to tenants, says Tubridy who is also a member of the Community Action Tenants Union (CATU).

“I’m not endorsing this a good model, but it is a basic fact that you know who they are as an individual by name,” says Tubridy.

Renting from larger corporate landlords changes the dynamic, she says. “It’s a much more anonymous and in some ways much more difficult system to navigate.”

Tenants who rent day to day from subsidiaries of LRC Group can correspond with its property manager in Ireland, Home Club Limited.

But that wasn’t enough for Elliott, he says. He grew frustrated with what he says were delays with maintenance in the flat he lived in.

Yes, he had a contact through local property managers.

But he does feel that if the property had been owned through a simpler company structure, or an individual landlord, the ultimate owners would be identifiable and that brings more accountability, he says.

In the Liberties, Adriana Ribeiro says that she hasn’t been able to work out who else she can talk to about issues during her tenancy in an apartment on Cork Street.

She has pushed for more frequent cleaning of common areas, she says, because of the pigeon droppings from flocks roosting near the entrance to the block. “It’s really smelly.”

The gate at the front of the building bangs loud, she says, waking her early with comings and goings. “Now, I’ve kind of got used. But sometimes when you want to relax it’s really annoying.”

She asked Home Club in an email how often contractors are paid to clean the area. They couldn’t tell her, they said.

“I tried to contact different institutions,” she says.

She went to the Residential Tenancies Board to try to work out the correct route to pursue it. The email back wasn’t clear to her, she says.

“I presume because they don’t want to take part or give an opinion, they are so formal in the way they talk or they give information, that you’re like, what are you talking about,” she says.

She reached out to the Property Services Regulatory Authority, which sent an email back elaborating on the responsibilities of owner management companies (OMCs) – the companies formed with all the owners of apartments in a given building or estate, which hire property management companies to take care of common areas of a building.

But she hasn’t managed to find and contact an OMC for the building, she says. She asked Home Club Limited for the contact details. No, said an employee, “however I can pass on any message”.

Home Club hasn’t responded to an email sent through its website portal as to why it can’t provide that information.

Ribeiro says there should be more information in her lease about the different entities and individuals who own and manage her flat and the building. “I have the right to complain. I need to know who I am complaining to.”

Tubridy, the researcher at Maynooth University, contrasts the greater transparency around the operations of publicly listed companies such as Ires-REIT, versus the decision-making and control within private funds like those managed by LRC Group.

Tenants and civil society groups can follow shareholder arguments with Ires REIT, which is publicly listed, she says, and read the company calls – and get a better sense of why decisions are taken.

Revealing beneficial owners

European Union member states do collect, in registers, some information on the beneficial owners of companies – and in Ireland, as elsewhere, that information used to be accessible online to the general public.

However, in 2019, a real estate company lodged a complaint with the Luxembourg Business Register, which maintains that country’s register saying who is really behind companies.

The real estate company argued that giving information to the general public about its beneficial owner, “WM”, would “seriously, actually and immediately expose [him] and his family to a disproportionate risk and risk of fraud, kidnapping, blackmail, extortion, harassment, violence or intimidation”.

Another real estate company, Sovim, also objected to having its beneficial owner named in the register. It argued that “granting public access to the identity and personal data of its beneficial owner would infringe the right to respect for private and family life and the right to the protection of personal data”.

These cases eventually made their way up to the European Court of Justice, which in 2022 wrote a judgement discussing whether the need for not only the authorities but the general public to have access to the beneficial ownership information was strong enough to outweigh the rights of the beneficial owners to be named.

The issue was basically: can the aims of the beneficial ownership registry be achieved without creating the harms to the owners’ rights involved with making their details public to an unlimited audience. And the court decided they could.

In the end, it ruled that the bit of the law that said information on beneficial ownership should be accessible to any member of the general public was “invalid”.

Member states shut down public access, restricting sight of the register to those it deemed to have a “legitimate interest”. Ireland has taken a particularly restrictive approach.

Changes to what is collected, and who can access the information, and knitting it together across borders, are underway though, says Stephen Abbott Pugh, a consultant on beneficial ownership and data practices.

Those changes are being made under the European Union’s 6th Anti-Money Laundering Directive, which was adopted in May 2024, and is currently being rolled out by member states’ governments.

Notably, the package includes a provision that any company from outside the European Union owning real estate within the European Union will have to report its beneficial ownership to that country, he says.

It’s a bit like the United Kingdom’s Register of Overseas Entities, he says.

“Say someone from the Bahamas is trying to buy real estate in Ireland, and they use a company that’s based in Bahamas, they will need to submit their beneficial ownership information,” he says.

That should go on a national register, which is pulled together and shared across the European Union, he said. That’s a few years off.

The directive also doubles down on a wider definition of “legitimate interest” than many member states currently rely on, and harmonises that so anybody who can access the register of one member state can access all of them, he said.

It provides that journalists, civil society, and academia whose work is connected to anti-money laundering and predicate offences are presumed to have “legitimate interest”.

They should be granted general access to the register, rather than have to justify each look, case-by-case.

It still, though, isn’t accessible to those who may just want to work out who is really behind their company landlords – rather than the nominees on the paperwork.

That limitation is because it is grounded in the money laundering directive, says Abbott Pugh. The scope is set by that.

“I would argue it shouldn’t be defined so narrowly,” says Abbott Pugh, who used to lead the technology and data team at Open Ownership, a non-profit focused on beneficial ownership transparency.

Beneficial ownership is relevant to understanding who is winning public procurement tenders, to finding landlords, to being able to find a name and check if somebody has been in court, he says. “There’s lots of reasons why it is helpful to know.”

Member states can themselves choose to opt for greater transparency around company ownership with other laws – that provide it for purposes other than combatting money laundering or terrorist financing, he says.

For example, Slovakia has a register which says if you want to win contracts from the state you have to reveal beneficial ownership details and those are made public, he says. “That’s been public for years and years.

Should Ireland go further? A spokesperson for the Department of Finance said that it will comply with all the requirements in anti-money laundering directives and regulation which aim to increase transparency.

Issues of company law are a matter for the Department of Enterprise, they said, “and as such this Department is not in a position to comment on this matter”.

A spokesperson for the Department of Enterprise said that policies around public procurement are a matter for the Department of Public Expenditure. A spokesperson for the Department of Public Expenditure pointed back at the Department of Enterprise.

Irish Institutional Property, which represents “institutionally financed investors with significant international backing” hasn’t responded to a query as to what its position would be on greater transparency around property ownership.

Who is a beneficial owner, anyway?

Even for those who can access beneficial ownership registers, when it comes to pooled investment funds, they may find limited information.

In the new regulation, beneficial owners in collective investment funds are defined as “natural persons” who fulfil at least one of three criteria.

They may hold 25 percent or more of the shares, can define or influence the investment policy, or can control the activities of the collective investment undertaking through other means.

Shareholders in private equity and big funds will rarely meet the threshold of owning 25 percent or more of shares, said Abbott Pugh.

Remember, filings suggest that Phoenix Financial, in the portfolios it manages, holds only about 12 percent of the shares in the fund LRC Re-1. Each member invested in those portfolios would hold just a fraction.

Some jurisdictions have lowered that threshold down, Abbott Pugh says.

A spokesperson for the Department of Finance said that, for funds registered in Ireland, it “does not have any plans to reduce the threshold for listing beneficial ownership down from 25% of shares and will align with the direction and agreed thresholds the Commission identify”.

There is also the criteria of whether somebody has significant influence or control, says Abbott Pugh.

“It’s a bit of a nebulous catch-all term. But even if somebody only had 5 percent of a company, they could still be named because they are important,” he says. He gives an example of somebody with powers to dismiss all the board members.

Finally, if a company says it is unable to name who its beneficial owners are according to the criteria, they can name a chief executive officer or managing directors, he says.

“Investment funds are a big black hole. Publicly listed companies also,” says Abbott Pugh. “In lots of countries, you get a huge amount of the economy going through and connected to companies you can’t really see in the data.”

Still though, he says, the new EU directive does move towards greater transparency than now, and towards connecting up all this data.

“The dream world is that all of this information is all collected the same way, and the data is comparable in countries, and you can link it all up and understand who the real people are,” he says.