Quinns claim double double-cross

THE POSITION of the Quinn family, the Supreme Court was told this week, was that they set out to put assets worth $430 million (€330.7 million) beyond the reach of the State-owned Irish Bank Resolution Corporation.

Now, having been ordered by the High Court to undo their work, they have discovered they are unable to.

Mr Justice Donal O’Donnell characterised the position as being that the family had set out to double-cross the bank, but had in turn been double-crossed by the agents in Russia and elsewhere that it had used to put its plan into operation.

Senior counsel Paul Gallagher, for the bank, said this was the family’s position but the bank did not accept that the family had lost control of the assets, nor had Ms Justice Elizabeth Dunne, in the High Court, when she found Seán Quinn snr, his son Seán jnr, and his nephew, Peter Darragh Quinn, guilty of “outrageous” contempt.

The hearing in the Supreme Court is an appeal by Seán Quinn jnr, who is currently in Mountjoy jail. Among the matters he is complaining of is that he has been told he will be jailed indefinitely if he does not purge his contempt.

His senior counsel, Brian O’Moore, told the court it was not acceptable for someone to be imprisoned for not doing something that it was not within their power to do. The hearing is to resume next week.

The contempt issue arises from orders made in June and July 2011 by Mr Justice Frank Clarke, instructing the Quinn family to desist in their admitted efforts to put international property assets beyond the reach of the bank.

The issue is back before Mr Justice Dunne on October 16th and there is a real possibility that Quinn snr, once Ireland’s richest man and now a bankrupt, will be sent to jail.

The bank says new evidence produced this week supports its contention that the Quinns have persisted in their efforts, not just beyond last year’s orders by Mr Justice Clarke, but right up to and through the contempt hearings in front of Ms Justice Dunne earlier this year.

The jailing of Quinn snr could result in a stepping up of the protests in the Border counties against what some there characterise as the hounding of a family that has done so much to lift the region by a bank that has done so much to damage the State’s economy.

Everything about the Quinn/Anglo saga is extraordinary and there can be no denying Gallagher’s description of the contempt case as “exceptional”.

The family says it sought to move assets worth $430 million beyond the bank’s reach, and that its agents will no longer obey its directions.

“The position of the Quinns is that [the money] is all gone now, you can do your worst, send us to jail, but it’s all gone,” Gallagher told the court. The scheme employed by the family was “so undermining of the rule of law and the administration of justice that it is without parallel”, he said.

Gallagher said that last year, on June 27th, convinced that the family was seeking to put the assets beyond reach, the bank secured an interim order from Mr Justice Clarke that the family should desist.

On June 29th the bank was told the family had initiated proceedings in Cyprus and that an issue as to jurisdiction now arose. “Deliberately false information” was given to the Cypriot court as part of the Quinn application there, according to Gallagher. Yet this action impeded the progress of the Irish one.

The Quinn family was already engaged in its asset-stripping scheme and even used $500,000 that belonged to a Russian property company that formed part of the portfolio to fund a bond it paid to the Cypriot court, as part of its application there which was purportedly to protect the assets from the bank. The money was paid after the desist order issued by Mr Justice Clarke, Gallagher said.

By early 2012 the bank had indications that the Quinns were acting in contempt of Mr Justice Clarke’s order, but it was told by the family that all the events it was concerned with had occurred prior to the order, Gallagher said.

Then, by way of documents secured through the courts in Belize, the bank became satisfied that the transfer of assets worth more than €100 million to an offshore company called Galfis could not have occurred prior to Mr Justice Clarke’s order.

This discovery, and others, led to the contempt action, which began before Ms Justice Dunne on March 21st of this year, the motion having been filed on February 12th.

During the hearing Quinn jnr said he had severed his links with Finansstroy, a property holding company in Russia, back in 2011. The company controls a valuable office block in Moscow called the Kutuzoff Tower.

However, on July 27th of this year the bank managed to get an administrator appointed in Moscow to look after its interests in Finansstroy and this man has since gained access to the company’s offices.

He found that key company documents had gone missing and computers and a server had been deliberately smashed. However, if there was an intention to put information beyond the bank’s reach, it was inadequate and the administrator has managed to retrieve documents from the hard drive of one of the smashed computers.

Among the retrieved documents was an email dated March 19th, 2012, (ie two days before the contempt hearing), from a Russian employee, Anna Filippova, to Quinn jnr’s gmail account, which begins: “Dear Seán, as a follow up to our conversation, please find required information below.”

There followed a detailed list of matters concerning not just the Kutuzoff Tower, but also other Russian properties in the property group with which he told the court he had no dealings.

Another email is from Peter Quinn, who has admitted managing the asset-stripping scheme on behalf of the family. Dated February of this year, it informs Finansstroy that he is withdrawing from matters because of an upcoming court case (the contempt hearing) and says all further correspondence should be send to Quinn jnr.

Another email, from Stephen Kelly, husband of Aoife Quinn, is dated July 19th, 2011, and concerns employment contracts with Russian companies for Ciara Quinn, Aoife Quinn, Colette Quinn, Niall McPartland, husband of Ciara Quinn, and Karen Woods, wife of Quinn jnr. The email asks that the contracts have the same dates as Quinn jnr’s and Kelly’s, and says the five “will be visiting Oceanbank on Tuesday 26th, where they will be given Russian bank accounts”.

A linked email says there is no need for the contracts to deal with medical insurance “as the employees will be performing their duties from Ireland”. The six-figure annual salaries that were paid out as a result continued until July of this year.

If the emails had not come to light, then the Supreme Court would be dealing with Quinn’s appeal “on a basis that is absolutely false,” Gallagher told the court.

The position of the Quinns is [the money] is all gone now, you can do your worst, send us to jail, but it’s all gone