Seán Quinn's actions played a key role in destabilising Anglo Irish Bank, and it's time he explained some of them, writes Ciarán Hancock

On the website of the Fermanagh-based Quinn Group, there’s a video clip of founder Seán Quinn’s interview on January 30th with RTÉ’s Tommie Gorman. It lasts for one minute and 39 seconds.

To date, that interview is the only time that Seán Quinn has deigned to talk to the nation about his disastrous stakebuilding in Anglo Irish Bank, which was pivotal in destabilising what was once our third biggest bank.

Its inclusion on Quinn Group’s corporate website, alongside several fluffy videos about its history and various business interests, is aimed at giving “greater visibility of our overall group activities”, according to the March 2009 “update” to staff and customers.

In addition to a new year message from Quinn, the group said it was “pleased” to have “gone some way to correct some of the unbalanced and inaccurate media coverage in recent months”.

Coming from someone who has studiously avoided talking to the media over the years and who deliberately hid his stakebuilding in Anglo from public view, this statement is hard to take.

With 5,500 employees in Ireland and business interests in everything from cement and glass-making to insurance, pubs to hotels, there is huge regard for Seán Quinn in this country, particularly around Cavan and Derrylin in Fermanagh, where much of his empire is based.

But why hasn’t he been asked to attend an Oireachtas committee hearing to explain his Anglo share buying, given that former chairman Seán FitzPatrick and the Financial Regulator have both been asked to appear?

Events of the past 12 months have dented Quinn’s reputation as well as his bank balance. Anglo Irish Bank’s downfall has raised several questions about Quinn’s business acumen and his judgment.

Quinn opted to communicate his message via a self-serving interview for broadcast on all of RTÉ’s main news bulletins.

He wanted it to be known that his Quinn Group would not go out of business in spite of the eyewatering €1 billion-plus in losses that the Quinn family had racked up.

Secondly, he told us that there was no impropriety on the part of Quinn and his family in their share dealings with Anglo. It was a bet that simply went badly wrong and they were paying the price.

The interview left a lot of questions unanswered, which we presume were the rules of engagement.

Quinn was asked how much he had lost on his investment in Anglo Irish Bank. “It’s more than a billion,” he replied. “I’ll not get into that. It’s substantial money but then our company makes €400 or €500 million profit a year.

“There are two things that can be said,” Quinn continued. “Anything we’ve done, we paid the price for it. We were not involved in anything . . . no impropriety at all.”

“We just paid a price for it, paid a heavy price. We didn’t see the stocks continuing to go down as much as they did.”

He also wanted to scotch the notion that there was any impropriety in the Anglo share dealing.

“In 35 years of business, me, my company, my family or nobody was ever involved in my lifetime or the lifetime before me in any impropriety in business,” he said.

This might be so but about a decade ago, Quinn failed in an attempt to block a Co Meath cement plant planned by the rival Lagan Group.

A High Court judge struck out proceedings taken by the Quinn Group against Lagan Cement, after he found the action was mounted in “a cynical, calculated and unscrupulous fashion” for the sole purpose of inflicting damage on a competitor. It was revealed that the Quinn Group had stealthily donated IR£30,000 to a local group opposing the Lagan plan. Quinn told The Irish Times he regretted this “mistake”.

There’s no doubt that the Quinn family have paid a hefty financial price for their involvement in Anglo share trading. Then again, haven’t we all.

Anglo was nationalised in January, leaving Quinn and other investors with worthless share certificates but also leaving the bank’s potentially toxic loan book for taxpayers to sort out.

That’s to say nothing of the hit to pension funds and the reputational damage to Ireland Inc with global investors.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Quinn declined a request from this newspaper for an interview to discuss his involvement in Anglo Irish Bank.

There are many questions that remain unanswered about his involvement with the bank.

Why did Quinn and his family build a 25 per cent stake in Anglo, then one of Ireland’s largest public companies and biggest banks? Did he want to mount a bid for the bank or simply be a passive investor? Given his various cement and building materials interests, did Quinn simply want a cut of the action with the so-called “builders’ bank”?

Why did he build his stake in a secretive manner by dealing in contracts for difference (CFDs), which do not require disclosure of ownership to the stock exchange?

Quinn used stockbrokers outside the State to build his stake in Anglo in secret.

Did he have a role in the formation of the so-called golden circle of 10 investors that Anglo’s top brass assembled to help the Quinns offload 10 per cent of their shareholding in the bank in an orderly fashion in the spring of 2008?

Taoiseach Brian Cowen, who was minister for finance at that time, told the Dáil recently that he was made aware by the Financial Regulator around March last year that there was growing concern about the overhang in the market of Quinn’s stake. Although Quinn’s stake hadn’t been disclosed, every dog in the street knew he was into the bank in a substantial way.

A sharp drop in Anglo’s share price on St Patrick’s Day last year resulted in a flow of deposits leaving the bank and was probably the beginning of the end for it as a public company.

Scenting blood and with global financial markets in a spin, speculators aggressively targeted the bank and ignored assurances from Anglo that it was in good shape.

It was only on July 15th that Quinn publicly announced that he and his family were buying a direct 15 per cent stake in Anglo.

It was also announced that the regulator had imposed a record fine of €3.25 million on Quinn Insurance and €200,000 on Quinn, because money from Quinn Insurance, a regulated body, had been used as part of the Quinn family dealings with Anglo.

Why Quinn decided to invest directly in Anglo shares that were falling in value, having already lost hugely through his CFD investment, is not clear.

Anglo’s demise can’t be pinned solely on Seán Quinn. The actions of chief executive David Drumm and Seán FitzPatrick in concealing loans to directors and using transferred funds from Irish Life Permanent to artificially boost its deposits were key to its collapse into State ownership. Anglo’s board and the Financial Regulator were also found wanting.

The recession and the global financial crisis also didn’t help.

But Quinn’s actions played a key role in destabilising the bank and its share price and, arguably, created a chain of events that led to its near demise.

The events at Anglo are subject to a number of investigations. Notwithstanding this, Seán Quinn has serious questions to answer. This time it shouldn’t be on his terms.