There are no settlement discussions under way between representatives of the former Anglo Irish Bank and the family of the former billionaire Seán Quinn, according to a source with detailed knowledge of the matter.
“It is not on the agenda,” the source said. A report in a Sunday newspaper at the weekend said talks that were at an “advanced stage” included the possibility that the family could take control of valuable foreign properties that the bank has seized using a share receiver, as part of an overall deal.
A request for a comment from the family elicited no response. A spokesman for the bank said it had no comment.
Multibillion-euro suit
The family is taking a multibillion-euro suit against
Irish Bank Resolution Corporation
(IBRC), now in liquidation, seeking damages arising from the bank’s seizure of the family’s assets, including the
Quinn Group
, because of the non-repayment of loans issued by Anglo Irish Bank (which subsequently became part of the IBRC).
In a second major case, the bank is taking a case against the family, alleging a conspiracy by the family to fraudulently prevent the bank from seizing an international property portfolio worth about €500 million, over which the bank had legal charges.
The first case, the Quinn family case, is set to begin on June 3rd and is expected to last three to four months. A recent ruling by the Supreme Court that the family could not rely on the alleged illegality of loans issued by Anglo to support a Quinn investment in the bank’s shares by way of contracts for difference has reduced the expected length of the trial by about two months.
The family wanted to argue that the alleged illegality of the loans meant the associated guarantees lacked validity.
‘Conspiracy’ case
The full hearing of the second case, the so-called conspiracy case, is expected to begin early next year.
Earlier this month, Mr Justice Raymond Fullam ruled that state-of-the-art technology could be used in the discovery process, which is likely to substantially reduce the time and cost of going through the huge amount of data the bank might want to use in the case. The data allows lawyers who know what could be relevant to a case to work with the technology so it learns what might form part of the discovery process and flags such data within the overall data set.
The development is likely to mean that a process that would have cost more than €2 million could end up costing less than a quarter of that.
The conspiracy case involves a project put in place by the family, under which companies and lawyers in a range of jurisdictions were used to frustrate the bank’s effort to seize property in Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere. The family has said it stopped the process once ordered to do so by the High Court.
Among the moves made by the bank as part of its preparations for the case was a court application in the US aimed at securing details of email traffic from Yahoo.
