Rights over $45m debt linked to Quinns moved on

THE RIGHTS to a $45 million debt associated with a Kiev shopping centre formerly owned by the Quinn family, and which featured in the recent asset-stripping contempt ruling in the High Court, have been changed in recent weeks.

It is understood lawyers acting for the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) discovered the onward assignment of the debt when dealing with another matter in the Kiev courts on Wednesday.

The right to the debt was assigned last year to a British Virgin Islands company, Lyndhurst Developments Ltd, which Ms Justice Elizabeth Dunne ruled on Tuesday of last week was holding the asset on behalf of the Quinn family.

However, the bank has discovered the right to the debt has been assigned onwards from Lyndhurst to a Kiev company called Elegant Invest. An application was made to the Kiev courts on June 12th to have this assignment recognised, and the application was granted on Thursday, June 24th.

Four days later, Ms Justice Dunne ruled that Seán Quinn snr, his son Seán jnr and his nephew Peter Darragh Quinn were guilty of contempt for continuing to seek to asset-strip their international group of property companies in an effort to prevent the assets being seized by IBRC.

In her ruling, she rejected evidence from Seán Quinn snr and Peter Quinn about Lyndhurst, and ruled the company was incorporated so “the assets comprised in Univermag would be transferred beyond the reach of Anglo into an entity which was ultimately under the control of the Quinn family”.

The judge’s reserved ruling came after a 15-day hearing in May. IBRC has since claimed the family continued its efforts to move assets beyond the bank’s reach even as the hearing was under way.

Elegant Invest has an address in Kiev and is not a newly incorporated company. When contacted yesterday, one of its directors, Ruslan Horbyk, said: “I don’t speak English.” A spokesman for IBRC said he had no comment to make on the matter.

Last week a video of a meeting in Kiev emerged in which Peter Quinn was seen to laugh and say he would not be overly worried about having to lie in court.