Quinlan given €2m by Irish businessmen, court told

FINANCIER DEREK Quinlan received €2 million during 2010 to fund his lavish lifestyle from four so-far unnamed Irish businessmen, while his wife Siobhán received £1 million a year later from two British billionaire brothers, the High Court in London has been told.

Two National Asset Management Agency executives, John Mulcahy and Paul Hennigan, gave evidence in a case taken by property developer Paddy McKillen. He claims Frederick and David Barclay improperly deprived him of the chance to buy a key stake owned by Mr Quinlan in three London hotels, with the collusion of Nama.

However, Mr Hennigan repeatedly rejected the charges from Mr McKillen’s QC, Philip Marshall, that Nama had made it impossible for anyone to better a deal it reached to sell the Quinlan debt to the billionaire brothers.

Nama had been extremely unhappy at Mr Quinlan’s “lavish lifestyle”, Mr Hennigan said, adding that payments from four Irish individuals went to Mr Quinlan during 2010 to “pay for day-to-day expenses”. One was a loan of €1.1 million, secured against a painting owned by Mr Quinlan. “The balance were presented as loans, but we did not expect them to be repaid,” Mr Hennigan told the court, presided over by Mr Justice David Richards.

Significant extra detail about Mr Quinlan’s lifestyle will be given in the High Court’s chancery division next week when Mr Quinlan – for whom Nama holds €1.7 billion worth of debt – will be questioned.

Illustrating Nama’s dealings with Mr Quinlan, Mr Hennigan said a deal last year to sell a valuable car-park on Audley Square in Mayfair to telecoms billionaire John Caudwell ran into difficulties when a competing bid worth £7 million more arrived late.

Nama, he said, “had a suspicion” the late bid from a company linked to the Barclays was “a vehicle being used for the profit of Mr Quinlan”. The financier had a history of seeking side-payments from asset sales, including one land plot in Chelsea.

He had told Mr Quinlan that every euro he spent was being “subsidised by the Irish taxpayer” and that his spending – which then included an expensive rented home in Switzerland and private boarding school fees for his children – was “unacceptable”.

“You weren’t convinced by the story that the Barclays were helping a friend in need, did you? You did not regard Mr Quinlan, or his family as showing any signs of being in need, did you?” asked Mr Marshall.

“No,” said Mr Hennigan.

The information about Mr Quinlan’s finances had not come from the financier, but “from another source”, which he declined to name. Mr Justice Richards will rule on whether the name should be given to him confidentially.

Both Mr Hennigan and Mr Mulcahy rejected the argument that Coroin – the company owning Claridges, the Connaught and the Berkeley hotels – had been unable to refinance its €680 debt because Nama would not give it loans lasting longer than three months.Banks would not offer refinancing because relations between Coroin directors were “dysfunctional”.