MOSCOW, October 4 – RAPSI. The former Anglo Irish Bank presented evidence to Ireland’s Supreme Court Tuesday that the family of businessman Sean Quinn - who fell from his position as Ireland’s wealthiest man to a bankruptcy declaration - used a Russian company in an effort to allocate to itself 250 million Euros, the Belfast Telegraph reported Wednesday.
The new evidence, extracted from a damaged Russian hard drive, includes a series of illicit transactions that occurred as Sean Quinn, his son Sean Quinn Jr., and nephew Peter Darragh Quinn stood trial in June for contempt of court, according to the Irish Times. These transactions included a number of severance packages allocating millions of dollars in severance fees to various Quinn family members, many of which were backdated in order to create the appearance that they had been drafted prior to the issuance of a court order prohibiting such activities.
In June, a court ordered that Quinn’s son Sean Quinn Jr. and two other defendants should be held in contempt of court for their efforts to place substantial assets of the Quinn family business beyond the reach of its creditors. Key to the judge’s consideration in this case was a series of apparently falsified deals that rendered Finansstroy’s assets inaccessible to the bank.
The new evidence, extracted from a damaged hard drive, was presented at the start of Quinn Jr.’s appeal of his jailing for contempt.
In late 2011, the High Court of Ireland ordered Sean Quinn Sr. to cough up a 1.7 billion Euro debt owed to the Anglo Irish Bank, which has since become the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation. This was the largest financial recovery awarded in Irish history. Shortly thereafter, he was ordered in a separate claim to pay 416 million Euros, bringing his debt to upwards of two billion Euros.
Only three years prior, Forbes Magazine had named Quinn as the richest man in Ireland, estimating his net worth at approximately four billion Euros. In 2010, however, Quinn’s business empire collapsed. In November 2011, he declared bankruptcy in a Northern Ireland court, stating that by that point he had only 50 Euros between his bank accounts.
Anglo Ireland Bank was nationalized in 2009, at the height of the Irish banking crisis. In 2007, its shares were selling for 17 Euros a piece, but by early 2009 this value had sunk to 22 cents.
According to the judgment, Finansstroy is a Moscow-based, Cypriot-owned firm valued at $143.25 million, with an estimated annual income of $22.5 million. It is currently in self insolvency, having been declared as such by the Quinn family. On its website, Finansstroy describes its function as that of providing a full range of services in the construction and building operation business.