Give us our bread ...

The details of how the Quinn siblings accessed their huge amounts of cash beggars belief, says Michael Clifford

IT is not known whether the Quinn siblings went to work on the ATM machines in a rota, or whether they tottered along at their own individual leisure.

What is known is that they spent “lengthy periods of time” using cash dispensers to get their hands on hundreds of thousands of euro in cash.

Over a period of a year at the most, probably much less, the five adult offsprings of Sean Quinn, and two male in-laws, withdrew over €2m from ATM machines in this state. They just walked up with their visa debit cards, as if they were your average bank customer, stuck it in the wall, and waited. Then did it again. And again.

And again, most likely until exhausting a bank branch’s dispensing reserves, before moving off, perhaps to the next branch. Think of the poor, dumb customer waiting in line behind one of the Quinns. You’re standing there in the queue for ages, wondering whether the machine will tell you to take a hike because your account doesn’t have sufficient funds.

And then, when the customer ahead of you walks off with a big bag of cash, you find out that it’s the bank, and not you, that hasn’t got sufficient funds, because it has been cleaned out.

The details of how the Quinn siblings accessed their huge wads of cash is contained in a judgment issued by Judge Peter Kelly last week. The story tells much about how certain classes of people in this country have things their own way, and also raises questions about the whole notion of how the law operates.

As the world knows by now, the Quinn family owe upwards of €2.8bn to IBRC, the bank formerly known as Anglo Irish, and currently in liquidation. You and I are paying around €30bn to sort out the bank, its creditors and debtors. It is, in the worst possible way, a citizens’ bank. And the Quinns don’t want to pay us.

Around €2.2bn of their debt is the subject of a forthcoming legal action, but there is no dispute of at least €500m in loans which was given to the family.

As a result, a freeze was put on the family’s assets two years ago. They have been instructed by the courts not to ransack the various family companies before the bank can get its money.

Discovery orders were made in July and August 2012 to determine whether everything is being done by the book. The most valuable of these companies is an entity called IPG, the family property vehicle, which is based in Russia.

In July 2011, around the time that the freeze orders were put on the assets, IPG began employing the extended Quinn family in highly paid jobs.

For instance, Sean Quinn Jnr’s salary came to around €400,000, his wife Karen Woods was paid €320,297, Aoife Quinn over €376,000, Ciara Quinn €339,000. Colette Quinn did slightly better, pulling in €340,000, while two lads married into the family, Stephen Kelly and Niall McPartland got €260,000 and €281,000, although some of that was paid by another Russian entity. Nice work if you can get it.

Also fortuitous for the family, because if they hadn’t been employed, and had got their hands on that moolah, then they would potentially be breaking a court order, and could end up in prison. The payment of the salaries won’t ring many bells with your average working stiff.

Money to pay the family’s salaries was transferred to a bank called Ocean in Moscow, which was then accessed by the employees in ATM machines in this state. Thus, as the judge pointed out, “lengthy periods of time” were spent at ATM machines.

“There is no issue but that the defendants received very large sums of money by way of salary on foot of their alleged employment contracts,” the judge ruled. “The way in which these salaries were paid was very strange.”

What high grade work did they do to earn such banker-sized salaries? None of them appear to know. Colette Quinn, for instance, told the court that her employment contract was in Russian. She doesn’t speak the language, so she didn’t know her terms and conditions or what work she was to do.

Giving evidence to the High Court she was asked: “So it is your evidence to the court, you are asking the court to accept that you received €339,000 whilst staying in Ireland, apart from one visit to Russia to open the Ocean Bank account, and that at no stage did you have any indication in writing as to what your work tasks were as an employee of any of these companies?”

Colette replied: “That is correct. I have no documentation in relation to that, yeah.”

Aoife Quinn said she returned her employment contract to the company and didn’t keep a copy. She was being paid €376,000 for what sounds like old rope in terms of a job, and she didn’t hold onto the contract for dear life.

Niall McPartland said his understanding of what was required of him was “to get stuck in and help out where needed”. He didn’t elaborate. IPG is a company which rents out major residential and commercial properties in places like Russia, the Ukraine and India. Perhaps Mr McPartland thought he was going to be flown out to dispose of the garbage on the caretaker’s day off, or perhaps to give the odd apartment a lick of paint now and again.

Judge Kelly was not impressed. “It is very difficult to believe the defendants that they had no documents in relation to their employment.”

This is a serious statement. The details provided by extended Quinn family were given under oath, either in written or verbal form. They were obliged by law to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Employment contracts weren’t the only thing missing in the discovery order that the family was legally obliged to fulfil. There was no documentation on how the Quinns were paid their salaries. It is not clear whether they were paid weekly, monthly, or whenever they might be short the odd 10 grand. No bank statements, no salary receipts, or wage slips.

Aoife Quinn did tell the court that she kept records through text messages received from the bank when she was being paid. Unfortunately, her mobile phone was stolen. There is no indication of what the siblings and their in-laws spent the huge sums of money on. No receipts for petrol, or even a weekly shop in the local supermarket.

Most of the family referenced legal fees as gobbling up all their hard- earned cash. The judge wasn’t buying that either.

“In her (Aoife’s) case I am unable to accept the evidence that there was such a paucity of documentation in relation to the receipt of these monies,” Judge Kelly ruled.

“What is even less believable that there is no documentation in respect of the spending of those monies given that they were used primarily to discharge legal fees.

“There must, in my view, have been correspondence or invoices or fee notes in respect of these payments,” he said.

Ciara Quinn was also baffled as to what she had spent the money on. She had not one scrap of paper as to where she had spent it. At one point she told the judge that she gave some of her money to her sister Aoife and brother Sean. That was extremely generous, considering both were earning even more than her in their mysterious jobs.

“I cannot accept that the defendants (with the exception of Mr McPartland) do not have or cannot procure documents concerning how their salaries were spent,” Judge Kelly ruled.

There was other stuff he couldn’t accept either. The family members claimed to misinterpret the court order, despite accepting that they had received correct legal advice on their obligations. They all, accept Sean, claimed they thought the order referred to documents in their “possession”, and not also those for which they had “power of procurement”.

In other words, if there was an oul bank statement lying around the house they might throw it in, but they didn’t think they had to get onto the bank to get all of statements that the court had ordered.

“I cannot accept Aoife Quinn was under any misapprehension as to her obligations when she swore her affidavit of disclosure”, according to the judge, in a statement that echoed with how he also regarded the co-operation of Aoife’s siblings.

The judge was also sceptical of testimony regarded meetings, company resolutions, and attempts to sell what were described by family members as “valueless companies”. Practically no documentation survives from any of these events.

“A lot of trouble appears to have been gone to allegedly sell valueless companies,” he said.

In relation to company meetings called to sell shares, the judge said of what he had heard from Aoife, Ciara and Colette Quinn. “Some of the evidence was quite remarkable, and by times incredible,” he said. A number of the Quinns also made the astonishing claim they had a policy of deleting emails, including important or vital communications. Others, like Ciara Quinn, just deleted at random.

According to Judge Kelly: “She went further and told me she did not know what documents she had deleted but that she had included in her affidavit a schedule of documents which were formerly in her possession but which had been deleted and/or lost and/or destroyed which she had been unable to procure because she could have deleted such documents.”

Again, the judge found the sworn evidence difficult to digest.

“Overall, the testimony given on this topic was rather unsatisfactory. Certainly, the affidavits sworn by the defendants in a number of instances did not reflect the policy of email deletion which was actually followed and which emerged during the testimony.

“I am of opinion that proper disclosure has not been made under this heading either.”

Throughout his long ruling, under various headings, the judge found an awful lot difficult to believe. Kelly is a highly-rated judge, who has been to the fore in raking over the legal embers left from the collapse of the economy. He is not a man given to hyperbole, or exaggeration. Like many of his colleagues, he would be cautious in questioning the veracity of evidence he hears.

Yet his judgement of 162 paragraphs is littered with phrases like “difficult to believe”, “I cannot accept”, “I am unable to accept”.

In the round, the ruling suggests he has great difficulty believing the whole narrative that has been forwarded by the extended family. The suggestion also arises that the failure to produce the required documents was concerted rather than individual lapses or omissions by the various persons involved.

There are jurisdictions in the developed world where a judgment like the one issued by Kelly would form the basis of a criminal investigation. All of the evidence was tendered under oath. Some countries take the law seriously enough to pursue possible law breaking within the court system. This acts primarily as a deterrent to others, and ensures that the concept of all being equal before the law is taken seriously.

In this state, the civil legal system, and investigation of white collar crime, winds at an unbelievably slow pace towards resolution. In this state, investigation of possible perjury is extremely rare and largely confined to young people from disadvantaged neighbourhoods, who are too scared to tell the truth about serious criminals.

Judge Kelly has issued a new order of discovery against the Quinns under 14 categories. We must wait and see whether this time the order turns up any more practices neutrally described by the judge as “strange”.