Businessman Sean Quinn has said the recent attack on Quinn Industrial Holdings (QIH) executive Kevin Lunney means he no longer wants to take back control of his former businesses.
In an interview with Channel 4 news, Mr Quinn said: “I’m telling you a month ago I still had ambitions to go back into those offices and sort out the Quinn Group. Not today.”
Asked why he has changed his position, he said: “Kevin Lunney.”
“People can say whatever they want about me but I don’t want to be seen as being the beneficiary of abuse of criminal activity.”
Mr Lunney, a director of the building products manufacturing company, was kidnapped and beaten in September after being abducted from outside his home in Co Fermanagh.
He received knife wounds to his face and neck and had one of his legs broken in two places in a sustained attack before being dumped on a roadside in Cornafean, Co Cavan.
Mr Quinn, once Ireland’s richest man, lost control of his portfolio of businesses in 2012. He was later employed as a consultant at his former companies, but left that role in 2016.
Referring to the abduction and torture of Mr Lunney, he said: “I’d have no hand, act or part or no knowledge or no gain; I’d have no benefit of doing anything to Kevin Lunney. Kevin Lunney and I were good friends for years.”
“I’d think somebody with a high IQ would know that Sean Quinn is not a real fool. And that he would know that if something would have happened to Kevin Lunney, that people would be looking in his direction.
“Wouldn’t I know that? So, unless they consider me a real idiot, there’s no way that I could allow that to be done in my name.”