SEÁN QUINN jnr was involved in trying to put assets beyond the reach of the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) right up to the time he was sent to jail, the State-owned bank now alleges.
The bank wants this new evidence to be considered by the Supreme Court in an appeal by Mr Quinn against his incarceration last July by Ms Justice Elizabeth Dunne for contempt. The appeal opened yesterday before a five-judge court and is to resume today.
Documents retrieved recently from a damaged computer in Moscow include employment contracts for Quinn, three of his siblings, his then fiancee and now wife Karen Woods, and other members of the Quinn family. The contracts stipulate that they each get millions of euros in the event of being laid off by property-holding companies in Russia over which IBRC has mortgages and charges.
The charges were taken out when Anglo Irish Bank, now known as IBRC, issued the Quinn family with loans worth hundreds of millions of euros which the family cannot repay.
The property group over which the bank has charges is worth up to €500 million.
The documents indicate Mr Quinn was to get up to €15 million if his employment was terminated in two companies. His wife was to get €36 million from a number of companies in the event of her employment being terminated, as were Mr Quinn’s siblings Aoife, Ciara and Colette, and Ciara’s husband, Niall McPartland, according to the bank.
Mr Quinn’s cousin, Peter Darragh Quinn, was to receive €26.6 million.
Mr Quinn was allowed out of Mountjoy jail to attend the hearing, which was also attended by his wife and Mr McPartland. His father, Seán Quinn snr – who was found guilty of contempt along with his son in July but who was not jailed – did not attend court.
Mr Quinn jnr was jailed in July for his role in $500,000 being paid to a Ukrainian woman, Larissa Yanez Puga, in contravention of a June 27th, 2011, order from the High Court that the Quinns desist in their efforts to put assets beyond IBRC’s reach.
Mr Quinn has been told he may be held in jail indefinitely until he purges his contempt.
However in his appeal to the Supreme Court he is claiming that Ms Justice Dunne was wrong to stipulate that he needed to undo certain matters over which he had no control, in order to purge his contempt.
IBRC has recently had an administrator appointed by the Russian courts to look after its interests in relation to properties formerly owned by the Quinns in Moscow and elsewhere.
New material retrieved by him from the hard drive of a damaged computer shows that employment contracts for Quinn family members were created around July 27th, 2011, according to the bank.
The documents include an email dated July 25th, 2011, from Stephen Kelly, husband of Aoife Quinn, asking that the documents be backdated. A copy of this email was sent to Mr Quinn jnr, according to the bank.
The bank claims it has also retrieved an email dated February 2012 from Mr Quinn jnr seeking confirmation that salaries were being processed for him, his wife, and other members of the Quinn family.
Mr Quinn told the contempt hearing that he had backed away from any involvement with the international property group once Mr Justice Frank Clarke made his orders in June 2011.
The contempt issue is due before Ms Justice Dunne later this month. She issued a warrant in July for Peter Quinn’s arrest after he failed to turn up in court. He is thought to be in Northern Ireland and cannot be extradited as the warrant arises from a civil hearing.
Anglo seized the Quinn group from the family in April 2011.
