Quinn claims ‘scapegoating’ as bankruptcy overturned

FORMER billionaire tycoon Sean Quinn has claimed he is being scapegoated by Anglo Irish Bank after a judge ruled he was not entitled to file for bankruptcy in the North.

He also said it was irrelevant whether he was declared bankrupt in the North or the South.

“The decision today is a no brainer — there’s nothing to it,” he said.

“Whether I am bankrupt in Northern Ireland or southern Ireland — it’s a joke. What these people want to do is deflect the main interest ... This thing here is only a sham.”

The ruling follows a legal challenge by the Anglo Irish Bank — now rebranded the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) — which claimed he should be declared bankrupt in the Republic, where it is seeking to recover billions in debt from the businessman.

The lender argued that the 65-year-old’s “centre of main interest” was south of the border. Mr Justice Donal Deeny, sitting in the High Court in Belfast, ruled in favour of the bank.

Mr Quinn’s multibillion-euro empire collapsed over the last two years on the back of massive stock market gambles on the share price of Anglo.

Since Mr Quinn asked to be declared bankrupt in Belfast in November, he has been hit with two separate judgments of €1.74bn and €416 million by the Commercial Court in Dublin over loans from Anglo.

The judge said he did not accept that Mr Quinn was, as he had claimed, centring his affairs in an office in an industrial estate in his native Derrylin on the northern side of the border in Fermanagh.

The bank had claimed that a lease for the office may have been back-dated for the purposes of the bankruptcy bid.

The judge said Mr Quinn had not declared the office lease in his initial application to the court.

“He makes no disclosure about this office,” he said.

Mr Quinn had claimed he moved to the premises after being forced to leave his business headquarters.

Justice Deeny said Mr Quinn enjoyed a level of goodwill in the border community where he created thousands of jobs. However, he questioned whether a swift move to a modest office “could be painful to him”.

The judge also questioned the lease and what he called the “peppercorn rent” of only £50 (€60) a month.

Justice Deeny added: “Taking into account these and other submissions of counsel both for and against Mr Quinn I conclude, on the balance of probabilities, that this lease has been prepared at some much later date to try and bolster the case now being made.”

He continued: “I hereby annul the bankruptcy order of November 11 2011, obtained by Sean Quinn, on the ground that it should not have been made as the centre of the debtor’s main interests was not in Northern Ireland at the time of bringing the petition but within the jurisdiction of the High Court in Dublin.”

He ordered Mr Quinn to pay the legal costs of both the bank and the official receiver.

Outside the court, Mr Quinn denied he had ever sought to mislead anyone and said he had always worked in the North and had never used his home, just south of the border, as an office.