IBRC to challenge Quinn bankruptcy

The Irish Bank Resolution Corporation is to ask the Northern Ireland courts to overturn the bankruptcy of businessman Seán Quinn.

Mr Quinn made a successful bankruptcy application to the Belfast High Court last Friday and his worldwide assets are now under the control of the Official Receiver in Northern Ireland.

The order was secured with no notice to IRBC, which initiated proceedings in Dublin nine days earlier for summary judgment orders for more than €2 billion against Mr Quinn.

IBRC, formerly Anglo, is pressing ahead with its action here.

In the  Commercial Court today, Mr Justice Peter Kelly said today it was “clearly at issue” whether the bankruptcy was properly obtained or, as the bank alleged, contrived to frustrate its case.

IBRC had “telling” information concerning Mr Quinn’s centre of main interests which was not before the Northern courts and left open the suggestion the bankruptcy was contrived and “forum shopping” as the NI bankruptcy regime was more lenient than here, he said.

IBRC only today received the bankruptcy petition which, its counsel Paul Gallagher SC said, asserted Mr Quinn’s centre of main interests is in Northern Ireland because companies of his are registered at Derrylin, Co Fermanagh and he is domiciled for taxation there.

The petition also set out a “not complete” schedule of his debts, while the cause of bankruptcy was described as due to his ongoing dispute with IBRC.

It was “extraordinary” for Mr Quinn to claim he first had difficulty paying his debts in April 2011 when he had provided guarantees of some €2.8 billion relating to companies which he knew could not pay. The bankruptcy was “obviously planned”

The judge agreed to admit the application for €2 billion summary judgment orders against Mr Quinn to the Commercial Court but adjourned the hearing of the application to Monday next to allow the trustee in bankruptcy in NI consider if he wishes to be represented.

Mr Quinn’s claim that his centre of main interest is Northern Ireland was set out in one sentence and was “seriously at odds” with the raft of information suggesting Mr Quinn’s commercial activities and residence is here and the money was borrowed from an Irish bank governed by Irish law, the judge said. “To go North certainly raises a few questions, to put it at its lowest.”

The issue of annulment of bankruptcy was for the Northern courts to decide but, as of now, there was no impediment to the bank bringing legal action here against Mr Quinn, he added.

That action was for “astonishing” sums arising mainly from guarantees of borrowings of companies associated with Mr Quinn including for “ventures, or adventures” in places as far away as Russia and India.

Aidan Redmond SC, for Mr Quinn, earlier asked the judge to adjourn or stay the bank’s application for admission but the judge ruled, as Mr Quinn was a bankrupt and his counsel was not instructed by the trustee, Mr Quinn had no legal standing to make that application.

Mr Quinn could not “have his cake and eat it” and he was not sympathetic to giving him any indulgence, the judge remarked.