Sean Quinn concluded nearly four days of evidence at the High Court last week by saying he greatly resented accusations by the former Anglo Irish Bank that he is in contempt of a court order from last Summer. It is alleged the 65 year old business tycoon, his son Sean Quinn Junior and nephew Peter Darragh Quinn dispersed international Quinn assets in breach of an injunction. All three deny the charges of contempt. Among the contempt claims against Sean Quinn senior is involvement in alleged assignment of about $130m worth of loans to a Belize entity for nominal consideration on or after July 20, 2011, and in backdating those loans to April 2011. It is also alleged he was involved in a fraudulent assignment on or after July 6, 2011, of a €45.2m debt to a Northern Ireland company, Innishmore, controlled by Peter Darragh Quinn, with a view to taking control of a Ukrainian property asset worth about US$78m. The Kutuzoff Tower, with a $20m (€15m) rent roll, was once the Quinn children’s office block in Moscow but now is controlled by Yaroslav Gurnyak. He had to testify by video-link from Russia to a Belize court in one of the myriad offshore legal actions taken by IBRC. The Univermag shopping centre in Kiev, Ukraine, is under the control of Larisa Yanez Puga, who was the long-standing manager of the family’s Ukrainian properties: the modern office complex the Leonardo Business Centre, and a refurbished shopping mall, Univermag. According to IBRC, Yaroslav Gurnyak and Larisa Yanez Puga, are pawns in a “sinister conspiracy” by the Quinns to put their assets beyond the bank’s reach. The plot, the bank claims, involved labyrinthine business dealings encompassing the companies that owned the prize assets: valuable shares were sold for a pittance; company debts transferred to offshore companies. IBRC obtained a court injunction in Northern Ireland to stop this alleged conspiracy of asset stripping in June but the bank claims the family continued regardless, and alleges that certain transactions were backdated. To read the full story see this week’s Leitrim Observer. |