Quinn family granted transcript of Anglo trial

A judge has ordered that the family of businessman Sean Quinn can receive transcripts of the criminal trial of three former Anglo Irish Bank executives after lawyers for the bankers withdrew their objections.

Previously lawyers for Pat Whelan described a request by the Quinn family for the transcript as a “fishing expedition”.

Mr Whelan and William McAteer were convicted last April of breaching the Companies Act by illegally lending money to the Maple Ten group of investors so they could buy shares in Anglo. This was for the purpose of stabilising the bank’s plummeting share price.

Mr Whelan, of Malahide, Dublin, and Mr McAteer of Greenrath, Tipperary Town, Co. Tipperary, denied all charges against them. Their co-accused, former Anglo chairman Sean FitzPatrick of Whitshead Road, Greystones, Co Wicklow, was found not guilty on all 16 counts.

The jury acquitted Mr Whelan and Mr McAteer on six charges of lending money for the same purpose to members of former billionaire businessman Sean Quinn’s family.

The trial heard a total of €450 million was illegally loaned to the Maple Ten while €160 million was loaned to Mr Quinn’s wife and five children.

Today Michael Staines, solicitor for Mr Whelan and Mr McAteer, said his clients were agreeing to the releasing of the transcripts on the undertaking that they will be used only for the furtherance of civil proceedings by members of the Quinn family.

Judge Martin Nolan granted the transcripts on receipt of payment of the cost of issuing them.

Paul Brady BL, counsel for the six former non executives directors of the bank who are co-defendants in Quinn civil case against the Central Bank, asked that the court make it another condition of the release of the transcripts that copies be made available to these co-defendants.

Eoin O’Shea BL, for the Quinns, said his clients had no issue making such copies available.

During an application to the court earlier this month Charlotte Simpson BL, for the Quinns, said many witnesses who were in the criminal proceedings were also witnesses in the commercial court proceedings.

“There’s going to be a massive overlap in the type of evidence called,” she said.

The first civil action is due to begin in April next year and is set to take six to nine months.

Ms Simpson said furnishing the Quinns with the transcript was in the interests of justice because it would allow all sides in the civil actions to “agree substantial amounts of evidence” and thus save time and costs.

She said that the transcripts had already been furnished to the defendants in the criminal trial who are named in the civil action. This was therefore an imbalance of justice as they can rely on the transcript which the Quinn family do not have.

She pointed out that six of the 16 charges proffered in the criminal trial were with respect to loans to the Quinn family, as related to section 60 of the Companies Act. She said the breaching of this section, making the loans illegal, is one of the allegations in the civil action.

The court heard then that Mr Whelan and Mr FitzPatrick were opposing the application and that Mr McAteer was neither opposing nor agreeing to it.

Shelley Horan BL, for Pat Whelan, had said earlier this month that her client was opposing the application for the transcript and she described it as a broad “fishing type expedition” which was extremely vague.

CCC