‘Ireland’s richest man’ jailed for role in hiding assets from court seizure

THE property developer once styled Ireland’s richest man, with a fortune estimated at ­
£3.7 billion, was yesterday jailed by the high court in Dublin for nine weeks.

Sean Quinn was found to have been in contempt of court in preventing the seizure of millions of euros worth of assets.

He opted to begin his sentence, in Mountjoy jail, immediately, saying as he was taken down he was “never one to walk away from a decision, I’ve always been a proactive person, I may as well be getting on with it”.

In June, the state-owned Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) won the right to recover assets from the bankrupt Quinn estate. IBRC was formerly Anglo Irish Bank, which lent the Quinn family hundreds of millions of euros before going bankrupt after the collapse of Ireland’s Celtic Tiger economy in 2008.

Yesterday, Quinn said his legal battle with IBRC was a “charade”. “They took all my money, my company, put my son in jail, put me in jail and they have proven nothing”, he said.

Ms Justice Elizabeth Dunne said Quinn’s role in a scheme that put the family’s €500 million (£400m) international property empire beyond the reach of IBRC was “nothing short of outrageous”. In making her decision to jail him, Justice Dunne dismissed Quinn’s evidence in the contempt hearing as “not credible, evasive and unco-operative”.

The court rejected appeals from his team that the 66-year-old was too old and ill to serve a jail term. In July, the court sentenced Sean Quinn Jr to three months’ jail, while his father was spared to allow him to co-operate with the IBRC. His nephew, Peter Darragh Quinn, did not show for sentencing in July and a warrant was issued for his arrest. Quinn Jr was released two weeks ago. Peter Darragh Quinn remains in Northern Ireland, outside the court’s jurisdiction.

Quinn Sr grew up on the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic and got his big break when, using a small loan, he set up a business extracting gravel from the family farm and selling it to local builders. His empire quickly grew, diversifying into hospitality, construction, insulation ­materials, packaging, plastics, radiators and insurance.

Quinn was one of the most ambitious Irish developers during the Celtic Tiger boom but spurned the media spotlight and continued to live in rural Cavan, 65 miles north-west of Dublin. His five children were all employed in the Quinn Group, which was once among the largest businesses in Ireland.

But his empire collapsed after he gambled on the share price of Anglo Irish, the most reckless lender to speculators and developers in the boom years. As Anglo shares began to plummet in early 2008, amid concerns about its exposure to sub-prime mortgage debt, Quinn used money borrowed from Anglo to buy its own shares. Utilising a hidden stock trading technique known as “contracts for difference”, he bought over a fifth of the bank.

His punt failed spectacularly. By October 2008, when he was fined a record €3.25m (£2.6m) by Ireland’s financial watchdog for breaches relating to these purchases, shares bought at €6.28 (£5.02) were trading for €1.63 (£1.30). Anglo Irish is no longer in business, its debts contributing to the collapse of Ireland’s banks. Shares were rendered worthless when Anglo was nationalised in January 2009.

Quinn Insurance was put into administration in April 2010.