It has not gone away, you know.
The bankrupt tycoon is out of prison, while the once simmering unrest on the streets of Cavan and Monaghan appears to have calmed and subsided.
His tormentor, meanwhile, has been executed by the state as part of a grand financial manoeuvre.
Yet, the mammoth dispute between Sean Quinn and his family and the former Anglo Irish Bank rages still.
Yesterday, the two sides were back in court.
The Quinn family told the High Court they are formally seeking to add the Central Bank and the Department of Finance to their €2.4 billion claim against the former Anglo.
The move is not unexpected, but it does raise the stakes.
As soon as the government opted to liquidate Anglo’s successor, the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC), the Quinn family must have realised that their case against the bank was in tatters.
After all, even if they won the case and proved that the loans they had received from Anglo were illegal, they were still stuck in no man’s land.
They were suing a bank that was bust and in liquidation. Put bluntly, the bank would have no money and, it appears, no legal obligation, to pay them any damages.
In February, two weeks after the bank was liquidated, I conducted a lengthy interview with the two special liquidators, Kieran Wallace and Eamonn Richardson of KPMG.
I asked them about the impact of the liquidation on the Quinn litigation, suggesting that the family would struggle to enforce any potential damages award.
Wallace responded by saying: “I am not going to talk about their case specifically. But in general, there is a point there.
“A lot of historical claims against the bank will rank as unsecured creditors. They fall behind preferential and secured creditors. Under current projections, there will not be any dividend for unsecured creditors.”
Given all this, it makes sense that the family would seek to join the Central Bank and the Department of Finance.
After all, if they win, they need to make sure that someone is in a position to sign and cheque and pay their award.
First though, the family has to convince the High Court that the Central Bank and the department should actually be joined as defendants to the case. The family have 250 hours of transcripts of phone conversation between Anglo and the Department of Finance and the Central Bbank. This will form a key part of their application.
The matter will be heard in June.
It is easy to forget the significance of the case. Arguing that €2.4 billion Anglo lent the money for the "illegal purpose" of propping up the bank’s share price, the Quinns are claiming damages for negligence and breach of duty by Anglo and damages for "intentional and/or negligent infliction of economic damage".
They also want a declaration that personal guarantees which they gave over almost €500 million in loans from Anglo to six companies set up in Cyprus in their names are similarly invalid.
This is the biggest commercial court case in the history of the Irish state, by a considerable distance.
The move to add the Department of Finance and the Central Bank to the case thickens the plot.
Ian Kehoe
No comments:
Post a Comment