Quinns 'are being made scapegoats'

The Quinn family has been made scapegoats of the financial crisis surrounding the former Anglo Irish bank, Peter Quinn has claimed.

The brother of former billionaire Sean Quinn, and a prominent figure in his own right who was once president of the GAA, said his family remained united in the face of major criticism and damning court findings.

He said there was no split over the decision of Sean Quinn Jr to go to jail for contempt of court, while his son Peter Darragh avoided prison by remaining in the North.

Mr Quinn claimed his son believed he had tried to purge his contempt and saw no reason why he should go to prison.

“There’s one thing about the Quinns – we have never split on any issue and we won’t split on this issue,” he told BBC Radio Ulster’s Sunday Sequence.

“There has never been a family dispute in our generation of any significance and there won’t be.

“Sure, Peter’s north of the border, Sean’s in jail – they both made the decision.

“Sean was asked by his father if he was going to go to jail, he said he would go to jail if that’s what was in the best interests of the group.

“Peter was asked if he would go to jail, he said he didn’t see any reason why he should go to jail.”

Last month a court ruled that Peter Darragh Quinn, Sean Quinn Sr and Sean Quinn Jr, were in contempt after assets worth millions were put out of reach of the bank.

The renamed Irish Banking Resolution Corporation (IBRC) claims the Quinns owe it about €2.5bn.

Mr Quinn predicted the younger generation of his family would be back in business, but said they had been scape-goated.

He attacked politicians and the media and said they should be dropped “into the middle of the Atlantic”.

The family’s business dealings have come in for major criticism, but Mr Quinn denied they were to blame for the bank’s collapse.

“That’s not our fault that it went wrong. It went wrong to a royal degree because the bank was undertaking activities which it shouldn’t have been undertaking. It was not being honest with its shareholders, it was not being honest with the investment community and indeed it was not being honest with its borrowers.”

He said his family’s claims that they were in the dark about Anglo at the time of his brother’s dealings will eventually be proven in court: “We will win it at European level.”

He defended his brother’s use of contracts for difference in finance deals, which he said were widespread in investments in Dublin economic activity.

“It didn’t plunge the bank into billions of pounds of losses. So far as it plunged anyone into losses, it plunged the Quinn family into losses. It didn’t plunge the bank into losses.

“The bank was making losses based on its own poor performance and the fact that it was fudging its balance sheet.”

On the issue of assets being moved out of the control of the bank, he said “our view was those assets never belonged to Anglo”.

Despite the damning court findings, he said his brother was “an obvious scapegoat”.

“The fact that he is from the border, and that he is from the north, the fact that he doesn’t speak with a Dublin accent, that he hasn’t any education, all of those things are factors.

“He is an outsider, he always was an outsider and he clearly is still a outsider.”

He added: “People along the border are not very highly valued in either Dublin or Belfast, and certainly nationalists along the border are not very highly valued in either place.”

Mr Quinn said his brother was Ireland’s greatest manufacturer and could have gone on to succeed in his business ventures.

Asked if he maintained that the Quinn family were the only people in the saga with clean hands, he said: “I am not saying that. Sean took 230 million out of the insurance company which he shouldn’t have taken. In terms of putting the assets beyond the use of Anglo, we would have much preferred not to have had to do that. We were forced into doing that.

“The reality is that Anglo have won the PR war. The media have taken the Anglo story hook, line and sinker and they have convicted the Quinns of things that we didn’t do.

“I am not saying the Quinns have clean hands in everything. We would never have said that. Even when we produced profits of half a billion a year we would never have said that we have clean hands on anything because that’s a claim that no businessman or woman can ever make.

“Clean hands is something that I don’t really understand. If I was in a laboratory I would understand what cleanliness is, but in terms of clean hands in business, in business you take advantage of whatever opportunities are there, and some people would consider that what’s sharp practice would be considered by some people to be good business.”

He added “There is certainly no dishonesty, absolutely no dishonesty.”