€276.4m debt not shown in Quinn accounts

ACCOUNTS FOR a Dublin company belonging to Seán Quinn’s family, which a Cypriot court has been told is allegedly owed €276.4 million by a Russian property company, have been filed but show no such debt up to August 2010.

The accounts of Cranaghan Property Management Ltd, formerly Quinn Family Limited, for the eight months up to the end of August 2010, show it had no creditors. It has shareholders’ funds of €2.28 million, just €3,169 less than at the end of 2009.

The company was to be struck off earlier this year for the non-filing of accounts, but they were filed on Friday.

An executive with the State-owned Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (formerly Anglo), Richard Woodhouse, told a court in Cyprus earlier this year that it disputed a €276.4 million debt being claimed by Cranaghan in a Moscow court.

However a spokesman for the Quinn family told The Irish Times yesterday that Cranaghan Property Mangement Ltd had no connection with any properties in Russia.

Mr Woodhouse told a court in Cyprus that IBRC believed the company “may” be part of a mirror structure set up by the Quinns to denude assets worth hundreds of millions of euro from the International Property Group, an international network of property companies established by Seán Quinn for the benefit of his children.

Anglo Irish Bank issued loans to the group and in return took out pledges on the shares of group companies. It also took out mortgages on the properties.

Mr Woodhouse alleged the family was setting up a mirror structure that would take over ownership of the properties and prevent the bank from taking them under its control.

He said a court in Moscow was told in May that Cranaghan was owed €276,414,903 by Finansstroy, a Russian company that owns a Moscow building, the Kutuzoff Tower, that is worth approximately $180 million.

A further hearing in July was told that a company based in Belize, Gulfis (or Galfis) Services Ltd, was claiming it was owed $100 million by Finansstroy. No mention of the Cranaghan claim was made at this hearing, according to Mr Woodhouse.

The hearings are part of a bankruptcy application being made against Finansstroy, which the court was told had assets of $94 million.

Mr Woodhouse told the Cyprus courts that various share dealings in Russia had the net effect of leaving Peter Quinn as the sole shareholder of Finansstroy, rather than the network of companies over which IBRC has share pledges.

Peter Quinn is Seán Quinn’s nephew and a first cousin of his five children. According to Mr Woodhouse, Peter Quinn paid €1,000 for the Finansstroy shares.

Two sets of annual returns for Cranaghan Property were also filed on Friday. The latest return for the company, which has an address at Blanchardstown Business Park, Dublin, is for the period to the end of May 2011.

The directors at that date were Seán Quinn, his daughter Colette Quinn, and solicitor Niall McPartland, husband of Ciara Quinn, another of Mr Quinn’s children.

The shareholders are Mr Quinn’s children Colette, Ciara, Aoife, Brenda and Seán Quinn jnr, and Quinn Quarries Ltd.