Sean Quinn avoids jail

CptMackey wrote: »

But Anglo also need to be investigated and people who were in charge need to do time. Regulator aswell.

All that I see happening is them going after the quinns as a figure head while totally forgetting the rest of them. It's pure and utter corruption in my eyes. The sooner this hole system crashes down the better. It is rotten to the core.

All the while we keep getting hit with more and more taxes and cuts and these bankers who were involved in the Quinn mess play the poor mouth as if they have been somehow wronged.

Indeed its a mystery to me, after nearly 4 years there has been no action against Anglo, or any of the others. I have heard statements from the DPP a few times, saying that the investigation is almost complete, blah blah. Its a total disgrace IMO, that such billions could disappear and the Anglo share price dealing scam as well. It smacks of corruption at he highest levels and suggests possible ingrained financial and political figures involved and revelation of such individuals and practices would lead to another financial meltdown in Ireland. If Hogan of FG is anything to go by, FG do not like investigations any more than FF did. As you say rotten to the core.

I have posted a similar post to this in another thread but I think its important to put this story into context, I think the whole story should be told when talking about Sean Quinn’s guilt and responsibilities to the Irish people.

Up until a few months previous the collapse, it was widely accepted that Anglo was powering the economic boom and their business plan was copied by all the other banks in Ireland at the time.

Behind the scenes, Anglo could no longer keep the dam from bursting and asked Quinn for help, he was initially told that they had a liquidity issue and that the fundamentals were still fine but if they didn’t get the necessary cash injection right at that time, the bank would go to the wall. If he invested he would make a fortune, save the bank and save the whole banking system, they would even lend him the money to do it, he would be a hero. People might call this greed but this attitude to making money had got him to the position that he was in and up until then he was seen as an entrepreneur not a greedy debt/tax cheat.

Up until that point, Anglo had a good rep and the Irish economy was perceived by most as strong up to the crash, it was generally thought that Anglo would survive it (at least I did), they had been too strong and successful in the past to go out of business. The main point on this is that the entire government fell for the same lie, hence the bank guarantee, mainly because Anglo lied to all these people big time not just Sean Quinn.

The Government at this stage also pleaded with him to leave his money in the bank or else it would collapse, he was basically told to put on the green jersey.

So now Sean takes a punt on Anglo, it goes badly and he is left way in the red. His major cash-cow, Quinn Insurance, gets taken away from him because the government changes legislation around how much capital is required in the bank to offset claims on policies, they deliberately gave Quinn very little time to meet these requirements as they knew he was at his weakest at this point.

So he now has no legitimate way to repay these loans. In fairness, the fact that he used Quinn Insurance as a guarantee for less viable businesses and to buy Anglo stocks was bad business in hindsight but the way the property market was at the time they were set-up, made these businesses and decisions look viable, essential even.

Now the property crash goes into freefall which guarantees the demise of his construction based companies and the demise of Anglo.

So at this stage Sean has gone from Billionaire to in the red big style, almost all of his businesses, all in the EU anyway, had been taken from him and he now has Anglo at his door hunting him for "their" money back. Despite the name change this is still the same institution that screwed him over just months previous. If in his shoes, I would personally feel bitter about his treatment by Anglo, the fact that the government fell for the same lie but they personally were allowed keep their huge salaries and pensions along with the property developers that have been propped up by NAMA and of course the majority of bankers got away with it too.

He is now only left with control of businesses and properties outside of the EU, put yourself in his shoes at this stage. Would you just give up all control of the Business Empire that you personally built to a reckless bank/ government that has already taken a large chunk of it? I am aware that it is our taxes that are now footing the bill but that is because the government made bank dept into sovereign dept in 2008, this was their choice, not his. The German and French banks that lent to Anglo should be footing this bill so from Sean Quinn's perspective, the Irish taxpayer is been used to get the government out of the mess they got themselves into and to gain the moral high-ground and impose more taxes on the people that will never be reversed even after the money has been repayed.

The money he lost was swindled from him through lies by a corrupt institution and government. His bad decision with Anglo definitely played a huge part in his downfall and was reckless but I really don't think that this is enough to brand him in the same category as Sean Fitz and David Drumm who knew the state of the bank but still conned both the government and the shareholders into investing.

Before you judge what Sean Quinn has done, here is a very similar moral question for a lay person to answer :
If you were mis-sold a mortgage to buy a property and it is now worth only half of what you paid for it, it was repossessed by the bank because you can’t repay the mortgage on current earnings. You also have a second property outside of Europe, would you feel compelled to sell your second property to cover the difference in what the Irish property was worth pre boom to post to pay back the bank?
If I could get away with it, no way would I pay it back and I think most people would do the same in his shoes.

What shocks and disappoints me is the bile and negativity that is been spewed out here and in the media by the general public, not just towards Sean Quinn but at the people who support him. It is not quite as black and white an issue as many people here think and just because we chose to support him does not necessarily mean we are stupid, have a vested interest or have a colloquial attitude, maybe we have actually taken the time to look at the whole picture and then we made a judgement and have not solely taken the comments and opinions of a media owned by billionaires with their own vested interests as gospel.

Ramshackled wrote: »

The money he lost was swindled from him through lies by a corrupt institution and government. His bad decision with Anglo definitely played a huge part in his downfall and was reckless but I really don't think that this is enough to brand him in the same category as Sean Fitz and David Drumm who knew the state of the bank but still conned both the government and the shareholders into investing.

Most of us in the general public do not really or fully know what went on at Anglo. It is probably true that Quinn's association with Anglo led to his downfall, as he appears to have lost the run of himself. He went from a steady businessman building up his business empire over decades, to a reckless gambler. He gambled everything on the share price of Anglo, that is, his businesses, all the jobs, his wealth....and lost. Was it greed, arrogance, vanity or an obsession to own the bank? Who knows? He is not blameless IMO. He brought ruin on himself and all those he employed.

Ramshackled wrote: »

I agree that personal responsibility is lacking in our society and I can see this in all parts of Irish society and this really does need to be addressed but I do not think that Sean Quinn can be accused of this. He has lost a huge amount and may now face jail. He has admitted that he has made mistakes but he does feel that he is been used as a scapegoat which I happen to agree with. The reason I use the term mis-sold is because the banks and the government created an artificial property bubble and fed the people with propaganda about how it will continue to rise for many more years until a "soft landing" in the distant future. People were duped into buying houses because they feared that if they didn't buy at that time they would never be able to afford it. This is where personal responsibility comes in as you say but my point is not who is responsible, my major issue here is with the moralizing and condemning of Sean Quinn that he is some sort of monster when the majority of people in his shoes would do the same thing. .


We may not know everything about what happened behind the scenes at Anglo but we do know that the Government guaranteed this disaster zone based on similar meetings which would indicate that they cooked the books at least to make it look not as bad as it was. Anyways, I'm repeating myself here, please see response above I do agree though that he is not blameless but this witch hunt is getting out of control.

In fairness, whatever about the millions used to attempt propping up Anglo shares and the illegality of those granting/receiving those sums, which is not the current issue with the courts at the minute, its about assets to the tune of about €500million, which are due to the bank re a legitimate loan for other reasons, which I do believe the Quinns admit they legally owe. So, I do not agree that its a witch hunt and the Quinns, it appears, have acted illegally to continue to put said assets out of the reach of the Banks/State/Taxpayer. I think the very fact that the taxpayer is the one footing all the bills and gets austerity in return is what is really galling the general public?


http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0202/quinns-business.html

yore wrote: »

Had he not already built up a synthetic exposure to the bank on his own? And when the word got out, and the value of that position plummeted, they heard about it, called him in and gave him the money to convert it into shares.


Really? For the sake of the "green jersey" he was willing to enter into a scheme to prop up the share price.....Share that he held worth billions...If they crashed, he was going to lose big time. where was the "green jersey" when he was swapping 9-figure apartment blocks for laptops?

Yes, he already had shares in Anglo previously, my intention was not to portray Sean Quinn as solely doing it for the sake of the country but just that it may have played a part in his decision process although on second reading that is how it comes across. You are right, he wanted to avoid losing money and he thought he might have a chance of making some money too; my point is that his intentions were not to defraud the nation, the money he was gambling was not Irish taxpayer money at that time. Remember, this 2.5 billion he invested was money he never had, he was given this money by the bank solely to keep them afloat using his assets to attempt to get themselves out of this mess. This was a bad business decision in which he did not weigh up the consequences of what would happen in the event of a full scale crash. My reference to the green jersey was this money that was been shovelled into Anglo was all an attempt to save the bank, this did not just have consequences for Sean Quinn but the whole nation as is so widely seen today in every walk of life.

yore wrote: »

I think the just enforced existing legislation when they found out that other entities had liens on some of the assets Quinn claimed as capital on the books of Quinn insurance.

There is a good reason why insurance companies have capital requirements. Yo see why, here is an extreme example. I set up an insurance company that specialises in insuring against hurricane damage. I charge a bargain of 10 Euro a year to insure a house. I sign up 100,000 households. Between expenses and my own salary the company pays 900k a year. I'm sitting happy for the next 10 years. Company is making 100k a year and I'm very wealthy. There are zero hurricanes in Ireland.
Then there is one down the south of the country and 100 people who are insured with me claim a total of 50 million in damages. I only have 1m accumulated profit. The company goes bankrupt and the insured people become creditors and get one-fiftieth of their claims in the liquidation process.
The reason why it was not not acceptable to use assets that had a lien against them as capital is that they were not actually assets.
Again another example. A guy in work asks you for a lend of 10k. Says he will pay you back 12k in one year. You say no, so he says "look, I have a brand new BMW worth 100k. If I don't pay you back, you can force me to sell it. You might feel secure then. But what if you then learn that he already has the same deal done with 10 other people and in fact the car was used as security for the loan he got to buy it! Suddenly your position is not secure. Basically, the security (capital) backing up your loan isn't worth anything because other people have a call on it first.

I take your point; Quinn was put into a situation where he was probably not the best person to have a policy with at that time due to his exposure to these huge loans.

yore wrote: »

"Their" money? If is gamble had turned out like he thought it would, and he had made a profit, would he say "this was their money, so I'll give them all the profit too and keep nothing myself". Because Quinn built up a business empire, and he did it by getting credit to buy and expand his businesses. Would he have insisted on giving any profit to German and French banks had his gamble worked?

From Anglo’s perspective, they are after Sean Quinn for the money he owes them, they feel entitled to this money but the transaction that occurred between Sean Quinn and Anglo was illegal as he was lied to. He expected to make money because he was told the principles of the bank were sound. If a company went bankrupt previous to the state guarantee it would not be the tax payers that foot the bill it is the bank. In this case when the bank goes bust it logically should be whoever lent them the money that foots the bill. If it was a success the French and German banks would have got a slice in the form of interest charged on the loan, this is how a capitalist economy works. I don’t think this is a controversial point.

yore wrote: »

The taxpayer is bailing out Anglo. If they didn't, then all the people who had savings in the Bank would have lost them. And all the people who, probably unbeknownst to them, had money invested in the Bank through their pension funds would have lost it too. And it probably would have cascaded through all the other Irish Banks very quickly. So it's disingenuous to imply that no Irish taxpayer would have lost out had the government not done what they did!

The deposit’s were not the issue here, these could easily have been guaranteed by the state up to 100,000 without any major issue which I think is standard practice in this type of action, the issue with the bank guarantee was the debt guarantee for the full amount, this was multiples of what should have been guaranteed.

yore wrote: »

So if it emerged that Sean Fitzgerald had transferred a lot of Anglo assets to companies that he controlled in the Bahamas before he was ousted, you'd say "Ah, sure I'd do the same myself. Nothing wrong with that". Lots of other people lost money on Anglo. Do you think they should all be compensated? You seem to think that Quinn deserves to be compensated, but what about the other shareholders? Including of course Mr Fitzpatrick who also had loans from the Bank and owned a stake worth over 80 million at one stage? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo_Irish_Bank_hidden_loans_controversy#Background
And just because you would keep it does not make it right! It is stealing from the people of Ireland. They are owed money by Quinn and he is putting his assets out of their reach or squandering them so that they cannot get repaid.

Hypothetically, if I came on here and voiced support for Drumm/Fitzpatrick and developers, would you disagree with me? Treat me with negativity? Because you refer negatively to these people in your post.

The reason I distinguish Sean Quinn from Sean Fitzpatrick is because it was Sean F (in part at least) that fooled the government/shareholders into investing in Anglo when he surely must have known the gig was up. He had access to all of the data and chose not to tell the full story or surely no-one would have touched it with a barge poll. But you are right, the hatred shown to Sean F is a bit over the top too, it is a distraction from the fact the entire system was designed badly and is still designed to fail. He found himself backed in a corner through ineptitude and an incomplete understanding of how world banking worked and tried some pretty crazy stuff to save his bacon. He should however face jail if they can prove that he lied about the state of the bank. I don’t think Sean Quinn should face jail because I believe as stated above the contract that he lost all is money on was illegal and therefore not valid.

Originally Posted by Mr Micro

In fairness, whatever about the millions used to attempt propping up Anglo shares and the illegality of those granting/receiving those sums, which is not the current issue with the courts at the minute, its about assets to the tune of about €500million, which are due to the bank re a legitimate loan for other reasons, which I do believe the Quinns admit they legally owe. So, I do not agree that its a witch hunt and the Quinns, it appears, have acted illegally to continue to put said assets out of the reach of the Banks/State/Taxpayer. I think the very fact that the taxpayer is the one footing all the bills and gets austerity in return is what is really galling the general public?

He would have been able to repay this loan if he was not conned out of the 2.5 billion by Anglo. He was a multi billionaire up until recently remember..

jmayo wrote: »

And while we are it, lets have a little revenue investigation into the under the table payments sorry expenes given to these inter country and ex inter county fopotball managers that are now so fond of defending someone that so readily breaks our laws and effectively defrauds the Irish taxpayers of hundreds of millions.

Sure those boys are so twisted , they think we are still under British rule, hence their defiance of the law and propriety, they probably think they are being patriotic.

plasmaguy wrote: »

They thought they were infallible and could do no wrong and they are tried to put assets beyond the reach of the Irish taxpayer who rightfully owns them via IBRC.

Well thanks for telling us how the Quinns think, that's really insightful....

So are you defending the Bank Bailout?
In 10 years time, it will be Lenihans deal to blanket guarantee the banks, followed by his NAMA plan, that will be remembered for costing the taxpayers 98billion (not the 2.5b that everyone is getting excited about these days).
I wonder as someone from the Anti-Quinn camp, you must understand the German perspective when Kenny and Noonan are constantly looking to cut the amount we're paying back to the EU/IMF for that massive bailout?