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- BUSINESS
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Sudden absence following 3am meeting with lawyer
By Ed Carty
A sportsman, a numbers man, now a wanted man.
Peter Darragh Quinn was well enough to sign an affidavit at 3am yesterday explaining why he was not “overly worried” about lying to a judge, but hours later he was too ill for court.The accountancy graduate used to travelling the globe for the Quinns and the €500m International Property Group, has a warrant out for his arrest.
Branded by Judge Elizabeth Dunne as “most untruthful”, he left a voicemail for a solicitor minutes before sentencing for the offence.
Five calls from Peter senior, a former president of the GAA, did not raise him.
Schooled in St Michael’s, Enniskillen, and a member of Teemore Shamrocks club near Ballyconnell, he excelled at Gaelic football and played at senior level for Fermanagh.
But it was in the wider family business empire where he found his feet.
His role as IPG general manager was to build and guard a portfolio of assets for the Quinn children — his cousins Aoife, Ciara, Colette, Brenda, and Sean junior.
“Just a job,” he told a court, and not something to break the law over.
In an earlier lawsuit he admitted moving assets as Anglo, rebranded as the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, began debt recovery.
But Peter Quinn has always maintained he stopped the complex transfers when a High Court order was issued in June last year.
IPG was the Quinns’ equivalent of a trust fund. Money was pumped in to secure the family future.
Anglo claimed that, rather than managing the portfolio, Peter Quinn’s task became asset-stripping and hiding.
A network of shelf companies grew worldwide.
Peter’s management also saw him control the huge rents the developments took in: €27m in a year from Russian investments alone.
Judge Dunne described Peter Quinn as evasive, less than forthright, obstructive, uncooperative, and, at times, untruthful.
“He conveyed the impression of someone reluctant to be in court, to say as little as possible, and of someone who simply did not tell the whole truth,” she said.
He would have said and done anything to keep assets away from the former Anglo, the judge ruled.
Whether that attitude survives with the threat of arrest and jail hanging over him remains to be seen.