Tom and Michael Bailey, two of the biggest landowners and developers in the country, have gone on the attack as they face the prospect of being banned from running their own or any other company.

The brothers have launched a last ditch Supreme Court challenge, claiming that the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement, Paul Appleby, has made 'major evidential errors' in seeking to have them disqualified from acting as company directors at the firm they founded and run, Bovale Developments.

The two multi-millionaires are seeking to narrow the evidence that Mr Appleby's office can use against them in his efforts to have them struck off on grounds of alleged serious misconduct and alleged fraud.

The Baileys are attempting to repeat the success they achieved in the courts late last year when they prevented Mr Appleby from submitting the reports of the planning tribunal, which made serious findings against both brothers in 2006, or on certain Revenue documents, or on the memos of an accountant who found that they did not keep proper books of account.

However, even if the brothers score a success in the Supreme Court, Mr Appleby will still be able to use a report by accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which found that "large sums" were paid to both brothers as salaries but were not recorded in Bovale's books.

The corporate enforcer is seeking to have the duo banned from running and having any decision-making powers in their own company and to be banned from being involved in any other company for a period of years and perhaps even permanently. Speculation now has it that the two brothers will have a number of options open to them should the case not go their way and they are legally prevented from leading the company they built up since the 1980s.

These include taking the firm's domicile outside Ireland, to Jersey or the Isle of Man, or appointing others to manage the firm on their behalf. Bovale Developments is registered in Dublin but it already has a company, Bovale Ltd, registered in the UK that was last reported to have nearly E80m in assets in the year to the end of March 2007.

The Roscommon-born Baileys have been active in property development in Ireland and Britain since the 1980s and have been dogged with controversy since then. In his 2002 interim report into alleged planning corruption, Mr Justice Fergus Flood concluded that, 'on the balance of probabilities', Michael Bailey had bribed Ray Burke, the disgraced former Fianna Fail TD and government minister to clear planning hurdles Bovale faced in major building projects in and around Dublin.

While a Garda investigation was conducted, no charges were pressed against the brothers due to insufficient evidence. Mr Appleby's attempts to bring the two developers to answer for irregularities in the running of their business has been delayed by the Bailey's appeal to the High Court, first with an adjournment to December last and then a second delay until this month.

In June 2006, Bovale Developments made the largest ever single tax settlement with the Revenue Commissioners in the history of the state, paying over €22m following a major investigation involving Revenue and the Gardai. The Baileys did not contest the figure demanded by the Revenue and have never made a public statement on the issue.