Quinn made mistakes but so did the bankers

Why would between four and five thousand people turning up in Ballyconnell in Co Cavan last weekend to support a family who by their own admission tried, and are still trying, to hide assets from the State — in effect, from the taxpayer?

That so many of them appeared to represent the great and the good from both the Catholic Church and the Gaelic Athletic Association, including a Fine Gael MEP, only makes matter worse. It just proves you can fool some of the people some of the time. But why do we behave like so many yoyos?

Sean Quinn, patriarch of the Quinn family, started a business in Co Cavan some 30 years ago and built it into a conglomerate incorporating quarrying, concrete production, property development, and insurance.

In its heyday, it was a very serious player in Ireland and employed thousands of people, with a sizeable number being employed in the environs of Ballyconnell. Fair dues you might say — there is nothing wrong with looking after your own.

The Quinn family became mega rich and started investing in other entities and even further afield into Russia and the Ukraine. One of these investments was Anglo Irish Bank which has morphed into the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, having been taken over by the taxpayer under the burden of horrendous debt making the shares of Anglo worth absolutely nothing.

It gets a little hazy from here on in but the gist is as follows: the family borrowed from Anglo €2.3bn to shore up the share price of Anglo with the full knowledge of the managers and executive directors of Anglo and possibly also of the board of directors.

Anglo also loaned €450m or so to other individuals to facilitate this share support.

It would appear that it is illegal to support a share price in such a way — using shareholder funds to artificially make a share look more valuable than it really is. Obviously, the bank wants this money back.

The Quinn family is, however, arguing that since the loan was for an illegal purpose and the bank was aware of this, that they should not have to pay it back. The taxpayer may become liable for this as well as for the other €35bn needed to bail out Anglo. In addition, the taxpayer is being asked to pay a 2% levy on insurance products for the next 20 years to make up for the insurance losses.

In any event, the bank also loaned the Quinn family another €500m or so which was used to purchase various properties. Unlike the other loan, the Quinns do not appear to be disputing that they did actually get a loan. However, what they have done is rather than transfer the assets purchased with these loans to the bank, they have done their absolute best to put them beyond the reach of the bank, and in effect the taxpayer.

They do not apparently dispute this but have actually tried to justify it despite the fact that they had been told by the courts that they were not to do it.

Clearly the Quinns once had the Midas Touch but it has deserted them.

But there is one difference between Sean Quinn and many of those who now pursue him, namely the bankers and advisers who brought us to this state.

Sean Quinn produced something. He created jobs, many of them well-paying.

Bankers, on the other hand, lost the run of themselves sometime in the last decade and began to believe that they actually make the world go around.

Sean Quinn is being taken to task and will probably be destroyed because of his mistakes, and undoubtedly the bad advice he was given. The bankers, except a few scapegoats, will waltz into the sunset with megabucks in their back pocket.

The Quinns apparently did wrong, but in comparison to recidivists like AIB, they were angels, although that does not absolve them from obeying the law.

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