Lawyers say family wants to deal with bank

Seán Quinn Jr walked free from the Four Courts yesterday as the High Court heard bankrupt billionaire Seán Quinn Sr wants to co-operate with the former Anglo Irish Bank and purge his contempt.

Lawyers for the father and son said Mr Quinn Sr had “firmly instructed” he wanted to co-operate and purge his contempt.

But counsel for the IBRC, formerly Anglo, contended the Quinns were “still not disclosing what they have done” and argued actions were continuing to be taken which could lead to assets being “lost irretrievably”.

Mr Quinn Jr has been freed from jail pending a High Court hearing to decide if there has been adequate compliance with court orders aimed at restraining the stripping of multimillion-euro assets from the Quinn property group.

In Mountjoy Prison since July, Mr Quinn Jr could face a further period of detention and his father could also be jailed over the asset-stripping in light of material put before Ms Justice Elizabeth Dunne yesterday about which she voiced “grave concerns”.

She said of most concern was what had happened since Jul 20. She wanted to review matters urgently as what she had heard was “disturbing” and “most sinister”. She adjourned the review to Nov 1.

She made the comments after IBRC argued “nothing” has been done by Mr Quinn Sr to reverse asset-stripping measures and the bank had obtained new material showing a “deeply disturbing” picture, including that the Quinns gave “totally false” and “misleading” evidence in the contempt proceedings against them.

The bank’s concerns, the court heard, were heightened by the Ukrainian courts last week lifting a freezing order obtained over a $500,000 payment to Larissa Puga in the country, plus a recent bid to displace the bank as the main creditor in bank-ruptcy proceedings involving a Russian company holding the most valuable asset in the property group, the Kutuzoff Tower in Moscow.

Lawyers for the Quinns said they needed time to take full instructions and to consider the potential for mediation. They were instructed Mr Quinn Sr had been co-operating with the bank, that he was aged 66, had had two serious heart operations, and that this was about “his liberty”, counsel Eugene Grant said. Mr Quinn Jr was in court yesterday because the judge had indicated, when she made orders jailing him and his cousin Peter Darragh Quinn last July, that she would review matters in three months to assess compliance by the Quinns with 30 coercive orders aimed at reversing asset-stripping.

The coercive orders were made following her earlier findings that Seán Quinn Sr, his son, and nephew all acted in contempt of court orders of Jun and Jul 2011 restraining stripping of assets.

At the Jul 20 hearing, the judge said she would not jail Seán Quinn Sr then because she wanted him to be free to reverse the asset-stripping scheme.

Because Peter Darragh Quinn did not attend court, she issued a warrant for his arrest which remains unexecuted as he remains in the North.

Earlier, Mr Gallagher, for IBRC, said the case was in for review, and was urgent but that the bank was prepared to agree to a very short adjournment.

This was to allow the Quinns’ new lawyers prepare for the review hearing and also because the bank believed a full Supreme Court judgment dismissing Mr Quinn Jr’s appeal, to be issued next week, would assist the court as to how the coercive orders should be operated.

Mr Gallagher said Mr Quinn Sr had done nothing to reverse the asset-stripping. The bank had new evidence salvaged from the deliberately damaged server of a computer of a Russian firm showing the Quinns were in control of IPG companies well into this year, he said.

The Quinns, counsel continued, had arranged employment contracts providing for multimillion-euro termination payouts for themselves as a means of extracting cash from IPG companies and the bank did not know if those payments had been made.

This was despite “solemn statements” to the court by Mr Quinn Sr that any such contracts would be totally contrary to the ethos of the Quinn Group.

Mr Grant said he had just come into the case and needed time to fully address the issues. This was not a delaying tactic and he was instructed the Quinns had signed all documents put in front of them by the bank except for one about which Mr Quinn was seeking legal advice.