“There is no doubt that he made mistakes,” Seán Quinn jnr has said of his father, jailed businessman Seán Quinn. “He’s on the record that he made mistakes with Quinn Insurance and taking money out of the company.
“And he certainly made a mistake getting so deeply involved in buying shares in Anglo Irish Bank,” Mr Quinn jnr told RTÉ in a pre-recorded interview broadcast on last night’s Late Late Show.
Jailed on July 20th for three months, Mr Quinn jnr was released from Mountjoy Prison in October. On Thursday, he gave instructions that he wanted to purge his contempt of court orders, which led to his three-month jail term, his lawyers told the High Court.
Speaking of his father who was jailed last month for nine weeks, Mr Quinn jnr said, “I’ve no doubt that a day doesn’t go by that he doesn’t think ‘why the hell did I get involved with that Anglo Irish Bank’.”
Asked by Late Late Show host Ryan Tubridy if he thought his father had learned from his mistakes, Mr Quinn jnr said “I suppose he’s not going to be given an opportunity ... he’s going to be bankrupt for eight, 10, 12 years and it’s going to be difficult to see if he gets the opportunity to see if he has learned from his mistakes.”
Put to him that the High Court and the Supreme Court did not believe his story, Mr Quinn jnr said, “That is correct, I think the fact that we moved assets and we accept that we moved assets in March and April certainly had a negative impact.
“ All I can say was I certainly had no hand or part in that payment. There is stuff going on in the Ukraine and Russia that we are just not involved in,” he said.
Describing his time in prison as “difficult” and “lonely”, he said he thought it was more difficult for his wife.
Asked why she was paid over €320,000 by a Russian company, he said there were “a lot of things we did wrong” over the past 12 or 18 months. He said it was “my bright idea” to “get Karen over to Russia and be appointed a salary”.
“Karen now has court orders over her, her bank accounts are frozen ... she has to go begging to receivers and it’s 100 per cent my fault.”
