Members of the family of bankrupt businessman Sean Quinn want court orders permitting them cross-examine Irish Bank Resolution Corporation special liquidator Kieran Wallace regarding claims they may be hiding up to €500 million in undisclosed assets from the bank.
The Quinns say those claims, made on foot of information from unidentified informants, are “scurrilous lies”. Despite orders obtained by IBRC from the London and US courts for disclosure of documents, nothing has been obtained to support the allegations, they also say.
The family has also objected that the allegations were outlined by IBRC to the Commercial Court last May via an affidavit from Mr Wallace without the family being given any notice of them.
At that May 30th hearing, the court was told IBRC obtained discovery orders at the Commercial Court in London and the bankruptcy court in Delaware, US on foot of information from two informants.
In the London proceedings, orders were secured requiring disclosure of documents by Investec Bank and an employee which IBRC believed would show some €300m in gold was bought on behalf of the Quinns, of which €200 million was transferred to the Virgin islands.
The disclosure orders were complied with and Mr Wallace said no transactions as alleged were identified and the Investec employee had no connection with the Quinn famly.
However, email material disclosed by Yahoo UK Ltd relating to an email address contained information that tallied in some respects with original documents supplied by the informants, he said. As a result, IBRC applied to the bankruptcy court in Delaware, US, for disclosure orders orders relating to email traffic and it has since sought orders aimed at seeing the content of various emails.
Last July, the Quinns sought to see the documents in connection with IBRC’s claims and they now want to cross-examine Mr Wallace about various matters in his affidavit.
When that application came before Mr Justice Brian McGovern yesterday, Barry O’Donnell BL, for IBRC, said Mr Wallace has just returned from the US where there had been developments which he may wish to put on affidavit.
In those circumstances, the judge said he would adjourn the application to next month.
Separately, the judge has ordered the Quinns to disclose sufficient information to receivers appointed over various assets to allow the receivers properly evaluate claims of privilege over materials downloaded from laptops, phones and various devices.
