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

THE IRISH Bank Resolution Corporation is to ask the courts in Northern Ireland to overturn the bankruptcy of businessman Seán Quinn.

The bankruptcy was secured last Friday with no notice to the bank, which initiated proceedings nine days earlier for summary judgment orders for more than €2 billion against Mr Quinn.

IBRC, formerly Anglo Irish Bank, is pressing ahead with its action here and Mr Justice Peter Kelly said yesterday it was “clearly at issue” whether the bankruptcy was properly obtained or, as the bank alleged, contrived to frustrate its case.

The corporation 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 Northern bankruptcy regime was more lenient than here, he said.

The corporation only yesterday 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, referring to debts of €416 million and £375 million, while the cause of bankruptcy was described as due to his ongoing dispute with the corporation.

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 the North to 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.

Mr Gallagher, objecting to any stay, said he wondered how Mr Quinn, said to have assets of only €50,000 having been one of the richest men in Ireland, could be represented by lawyers making “beguiling and Delphic utterances”.

Mr Justice Kelly also admitted to the court the bank’s additional application for €3 million summary judgment orders against Mr Quinn and his wife Patricia arising from personal borrowings.

He rejected arguments by Bill Shipsey SC, for Ms Quinn, that delay by the bank in moving against Ms Quinn disentitled it to the fast-track procedures of the Commercial Court. This was a “well-resourced bank” and his client was a housewife who had not personally benefited from the loans, counsel said.

The judge said “context is everything” and there was no culpable delay by the bank as it had been involved in extensive negotiations to try and save the Quinn Group’s business. Ms Quinn was a director of several Quinn companies and this bank was “well-resourced by the taxpayer”, he added.

The bank had brought three actions, the largest being a claim for summary judgment against Mr Quinn for sums of €1.05 billion, $808 million and 13.8 billion yen brought under his guarantee of November 2007 in relation to the liabilities of Quinn Finance.

In affidavits, the bank said that, due to the scale of the borrowings and the large number of jobs dependent on the Quinn Group businesses, it had negotiated with Mr Quinn for some time rather than immediately call in the loans.