ANGLO IRISH Bank has claimed that a member of Seán Quinn’s family moved €4.5 million from a Russian bank account into which rental income on a Moscow office block was paid to meet loan repayments to the Irish bank.
The allegation was made in the bank’s legal challenge against family members preventing them from transferring assets from Swedish companies which hold the family’s properties in Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and India.
The bank secured an injunction from Mr Justice Frank Clarke in the High Court on Monday which is in place until a further hearing of the legal proceedings today.
The family were not represented in the ex parte application.
Anglo has claimed that Peter Quinn, Mr Quinn’s nephew who managed the family’s international property interests, moved the funds from the Russian bank of a company called Finansstroy.
The company holds property assets in Russia including the Kutuzoff office block in Moscow which produces the largest amount of rent among any of the family’s international properties.
A spokesman for the Quinn family declined to comment on the bank’s claims in the proceedings. Anglo had no comment to make.
The bank has taken the legal action against Seán Quinn, his five children, nephew Peter Quinn and two sons-in-law, Stephen Kelly and Niall McPartland, as well as two Swedish companies affiliated with the Quinn family, Quinn Investments Sweden and Indian Trust.
The bank has claimed the family sought to establish a corporate structure of new companies under the name The Cranaghan Foundation, mirroring the familys existing international property firms and to move assets into those companies
The court was told that the transfers were for the benefit of the Quinn family and in particular Seán Quinn’s grandchildren.
Anglo reached an agreement with Quinn Finance, one of Mr Quinn’s main companies, in February 2008, that all rental income from the Kutuzoff building would be paid into a designated account.
The bank claims that Peter Quinn presented a new signature card to Finansstroy’s Russian bank on June 2nd, making him the sole signatory on the account until 2016 and that the following day he instructed the bank to transfer the €4.5 million, withdrawing almost all of the funds in the account.
It was claimed that the aim of the move was intended to undermine the value of Anglo’s security on loans due on the properties.
Anglo is owed €2.88 billion by the Quinn family. The family’s international properties are worth an estimated €500 million and the bank is seeking to appoint a bankruptcy receiver to Quinn Investments Sweden, the main company behind the properties. The bank claims several other changes were made in recent weeks to the family’s international interests, including the ownership of a chain of DIY stores in Russia, undermining Anglo’s security and ability to recover its loans.
Anglo secured five restraining orders which in effect temporarily freeze the corporate structure of the international property group.