Alan Dukes leans back in his chair. Tall and angular, Dukes is recalling the frenzied, dramatic period almost a decade ago when Sean Quinn lost both his sprawling manufacturing empire and his garland as Ireland’s richest man.

Dukes was central to the story. A former leader of Fine Gael and a finance minister, he had catapulted back into public service to chair Anglo Irish Bank, the disgraced lender that had eroded the solvency of the state itself. 

It is eight years since Anglo, later renamed IBRC, sent in the receivers to seize control of Quinn’s borderland empire of glass factories, cement businesses, plastic production lines and much more besides.

A year before, in 2010, the Financial Regulator had placed Quinn’s insurance business into administration amid concerns of inadequate insolvency ratios. But the move by the bank the following year to appoint a share receiver to the wider Quinn Group was the more damning blow to Quinn, a move that resulted in myriad court actions all over the world and the imprisonment of Quinn himself.

Dukes has agreed to meet in the aftermath of the brutal attack on Kevin Lunney, a former Quinn executive, who is now part of the senior management team of Quinn Industrial Holdings (QIH).

Dukes is considered and serious in his responses in relation to what has been one of the biggest and darkest business stories of the last decade.

Yet, his remarks on the lack of action by the authorities on the sustained and escalating campaign of intimidation, violence and sabotage against those involved with QIH are striking.

The former Fine Gael leader says he agrees completely with Michael D’Arcy, the current minister of state at the Department of Finance, who said recently that executives in the business had been “let down” by the Gardai. Representative groups of the Gardai lashed back at D’Arcy calling his comments “ill-informed and elitist”.

Dukes, however, backs D’Arcy firmly. He says QIH executives have been “badly served by the guards and by the PSNI.”

“I think there was enough information available [prior to the Lunney attack] to make life very difficult for people who were involved in that kind of activity,” Dukes maintains.

We will return to why Dukes believes this to be the case later in this interview.

What is certain is that following the intricacies of what has happened in Quinn country is complicated. Dukes readily admits that his expertise begins in 2009 when he was appointed as chairman and ends in 2013, when the state suddenly liquidated IBRC, a move that saw his chairmanship ended.

His perspective as a former chair of IBRC is however unique and insightful.

Our conversation is wide-ranging and examines:

●          How the Quinn empire was lost;

●          The first attacks against the business;

●          Anonymous letter threats;

●          An attempt to broker a rumoured €200 million settlement;

●          The role of the authorities in protecting the business;

●          Alleged asset stripping;

●          An absconded nephew;

●          How Dukes feels Quinn’s legacy will ultimately be seen.

We start our conversation by going back to 2011 when Anglo, renamed IBRC, was nationalised and preparing to appoint a share receiver to the Quinn Group.

Tom Lyons (TL): Sean Quinn was a very successful self-made businessman by any measure. Why did IBRC feel it had to move against him and place receivers into his businesses?

Alan Dukes (AD): The bank was owed a huge amount of money (€2.8 billion). An essential part of the mission of the bank was to recover as much as could possibly be recovered from the wreckage of the old Anglo Irish Bank. We were looking at a group of companies that had huge debts to the bank and clearly no possibility of repaying those debts in the foreseeable future.

So, the bank had to take some kind of action. There was a group of companies that were, in the circumstances of the day, doing reasonably well. There was a group of companies producing real goods and services. There was an insurance company there too. It was a marketable proposition, but the problem was that it had this huge debt overhanging it – much of which had been accumulated by Sean Quinn’s gambling on CFDs [a type of bet on the price of Anglo’s share price]. Quinn had borrowed a large amount of money from the bank that was in fact designed to meet the margin calls on his CFDs. So, you had companies that were capable of doing quite well but that were sinking under a mountain of debt. The bank had to find a way of dealing with that.

Detective work by the bank in particular by Richard Woodhouse [an IBRC executive] determined that the circumstances of the company and the principals of the company and things that they were involved in showed that there were a lot of assets in various parts of the world that could be worth substantial amounts of money. If the bank could get its hands on those assets it could get back a lot of the money it was owed.

*****

IBRC estimated the value of Quinn family property assets around the world at €500 million. This was on top of its Irish interests which were even at the rocket bottom prices of the financial crash worth hundreds of millions. Dukes said IBRC held a series of meetings with Quinn to try and work out what to do. Quinn, he said, presented a recovery plan prepared by Deutsche Bank and an Irish financial advisory firm.

Dukes said: “It was essentially a proposition that the bank would lend a further €600 million euro to the company in order to give effect to this reconstruction plan. I read through the plan. Mike Aynsley [IBRC’s chief executive], Richard Woodhouse, other people in the bank, read through the plan and we came to the conclusion that it was a complete non-starter to add another 600 million onto the debt that was there already. It just wasn’t feasible. I remember saying this to Sean Quinn when he said: ‘Why won’t you do this?’ I said: ‘The bank would not be allowed to advance you a further 600 million and even if it was allowed I wouldn’t as this plan is not feasible. This was 2010 remember (when the bank was not allowed to lend more money by the EU). Sean was visibly put out by that. We realised at that stage, if we hadn’t realised before, that very definite action was required in order to get any sort of return of the debts owed to the bank.”

IBRC did not have the expertise to run an insurance company, especially one that had been placed into administration by the Financial Regulator. With the Regulator’s approval, it brought in an American company called Liberty Insurance to run this business instead. “Liberty paid the bank a peppercorn amount for the insurance company with a provision that further down the road if certain things happened the bank might get some return out of it,” Dukes recalled. It then focused on Quinn’s other businesses both in Ireland and overseas.

*****

Proposals and plans: Seizing control of the Quinn empire

“Quinn thought this was just a piece of bloody-mindedness on the part of a bank that did not want to hear what the real world was about.”

TL: Before pulling the plug, did you ask a third party or the Department of Finance to review the merits of Sean Quinn’s proposal?

AD: No. We only looked at it internally within the bank. I can honestly say that if anybody in the bank had said to me that we should consider going with this, I would have said no. I would be quite sure the board would have said no if it had gone to the board as it was just not a feasible plan.

TL: So, the decision to move against Quinn, did not go to the board of IBRC?

AD: Yes. I am sure you have seen more business plans that I have. There is one thing that such plans always have in common. They always err on the sunny side. This was a business plan that grossly erred on the sunny side. It was just a non-runner. We had to tell Sean Quinn that.

TL: How did Sean Quinn react?

AD: Badly. He thought this was just a piece of bloody-mindedness on the part of a bank that did not want to hear what the real world was about. This was just before we moved to take over the company.

The New York Times reported in January 2012 on what it said happened when IBRC told Quinn in 2011 that it was taking over his business. The paper said: “Mr. Quinn said he would fight like a cornered rat, according to the bankers.” Aoife Quinn, his daughter, told the NYT that what her father said was: “Put a dog into a corner, and it will come out barking.” I ask Dukes, what exactly does he recall Quinn saying?

AD:  I honestly can’t remember. I remember on the day that we actually moved to take over the company that it was a big operation which was planned. Sean Quinn came to talk to us. We put it to him that we had to move to take over the company. We asked did he have a different proposal to put? He had no different proposal to put. When he refused to agree with what the bank was doing the phone calls went out and the operation was put into place. We arranged it deliberately that he would be in Dublin so he couldn’t try to influence things on the ground.

TL: The first attack on the Quinn Group came later that day?

AD: The difficulties started very, very quickly. I heard very soon after that, you know, an opinion was voiced that it would be very easy to destroy the furnace in the glass factory by simply throwing a few iron bars into it. That would destroy it.

TL: Who said this?

AD: A person working in the company. I don’t know who. I wasn’t told. But it was a real threat. If someone threw something into the furnace it would take weeks to get it cleaned out and fired up again because of the technical nature of the thing. The problems started fairly quickly.

TL: Sean Quinn has always condemned violence against his former business. This threat in relation to the furnace was coming from ordinary employees?

AD: It came from somebody in the company. Then very shortly after that, this Concerned Irish Citizens Group [a Facebook and local support group which wanted Quinn to be given back his business] came into being. They were by and large local people in the area. Some of whom were in other businesses. Others were ordinary members of the company. The basis for their actions, opinions and representations was that here was a man who had done huge things for his locality; who was being very unfairly treated by an unscrupulous bank with a very shady background and how dare we disturb the system that was in place and had worked so well for the community.

“They still seemed to buy the line that Sean Quinn was the only one who could make those companies work.”

We interacted in the bank on a number of occasions with the community. We even did a briefing for TDs from the local area who were accompanied by local members of the community in Leinster House. We explained the financial plan we had put together for the companies. We pointed out that we had got a number of the investors in the company on board; that we had negotiated with them; that we had got an agreement from the investors that no company would be sold for a period of five years with the exception of the glass operation. And that there would be no reductions in the workforce for a period of five years. None of that seemed to impress them. They still seemed to buy the line that Sean Quinn was the only one who could make those companies work. As it happened that agreement held. The investors and the subsequent second wave of investors stuck to that plan. The glass operation was sold off but the rest of it has stayed together as a group of companies.

I have to say that when John McCartin came on board much later, I felt hopeful at that stage. He is a respected business name in the business community in that part of the country. I hoped that it would mollify people and show that this was somehow owned by a local, identifiable and sympathetic interest. But that has not proved to be the case unfortunately.

TL: But Anglo was in many respects shady. Some of its bankers were criminally convicted. Do you have any sympathy for Sean Quinn? Yes, he was betting on the bank, but he might feel he was betting on a dishonest game…and is therefore entitled to his money back…

AD: I am not convinced of his justification of grievance if that is it.

TL: He definitely feels he has a grievance.

AD: Yes. I don’t know what Sean FitzPatrick [former Anglo chairman] or David Drumm [former Anglo chief executive] said to him about the solidity of the bank’s shares which he was gambling on.

“Some people have paid the price for that [by being criminally convicted]. Nobody emerges from that period with any great credit.”

TL: We know that the bank was telling the market publicly that the bank’s performance was solid.

AD: Yes. But at the same time, there was a period in 2007 when the bank’s shares took a serious dive. It didn’t stop Sean Quinn from carrying on with what he was doing. He may have felt that he was misled but there were certainly warning signs. It is his responsibility for the decisions that he made. The fact is that he exposed himself over a long period to the demands of margin calls on the activity that he was involved in (CFDs). Yes, the bank did some shady things afterwards. A number of the shady things that the bank did were directly connected to it having to sort out the problems of this person gambling at such a level in the bank’s shares.

Some people have paid the price for that [by being criminally convicted]. Nobody emerges from that period with any great credit. Our position in 2010 in the nationalised bank was that we had to find a way to get back some of the money that was owed to the bank irrespective of the circumstances in which they occurred. We were facing a huge problem of getting some money back for the Exchequer and the taxpayer.

Poison pen letters and security details

Alan Dukes; “My understanding is that a lot of people in the area probably know who was doing those things and just won’t say.” Photo: Bryan Meade

Our conversation then turns to what happened after IBRC seized control of the Quinn Group. In an interview with Richard Curran on RTE, Dukes said he had been personally threatened.

“It was abusive, but it was threatening in a certain way.”

I ask him what form did this take. “I got one anonymous threat which was unpleasant and threatening. It was a letter to the bank,” Dukes said.

Was it an informed threat or just a crazy letter? “A bit of both. Nothing ever came of it. I certainly didn’t take it seriously as any kind of threat. It wasn’t a death threat but it was a most unpleasant threat. I won’t go into it. I didn’t particularly feel threatened by it. It was kind of what you might normally regard as online trolling.”

TL: So, it was abusive more than threatening?

AD: It was abusive, but it was threatening in a certain way.

TL: Did you ask anyone to investigate the threat?

AD: No. It didn’t look like anything that really merited any attention although we did have security people advising the bank at the time.

TL: Did you ever think you were being followed?

AD: No.

TL: Did any executive think they were being followed?

AD: I don’t know. We made sure we had security for Mike Aynsley and Richard Woodhouse just in case.

TL: Was there ever an attempt to blackmail anyone in the bank?

AD: Not that I know of. There wouldn’t be anything to blackmail anyone about in terms of what the bank had done. Particularly because IBRC, as it was at the time, was a different animal to Anglo Irish Bank pre-nationalisation.

“It was very formal. Brief. I wouldn’t say it was unfriendly, but it was certainly not friendly. It was business.”

TL: Was Mike Aynsley or Richard Woodhouse ever threatened?

AD: Mike got one letter I know of, the same kind of thing. I never heard that Richard was ever threatened but we had security on him just in case.

TL: When you dealt with the Quinn family directly, were words ever exchanged?

AD: No. I had one conversation with Sean Quinn and one of his daughters subsequent to (IBRC taking over the Quinn Group). It was very formal. Brief. I wouldn’t say it was unfriendly, but it was certainly not friendly. It was business. His daughter claimed afterwards that I told her she should look for a job which was something that astonished me as I never said anything of the kind to her. In fact, I was on my best behaviour and was careful about what I said. I didn’t want to add to the challenges we already had.

Asset stripping and offshore games

Our conversation then turns to IBRC’s attempts to get control of various Quinn family assets in Russia, Ukraine and India. The bank alleged in court that the Quinn’s had put in place a sophisticated asset stripping scheme to keep these assets out of the control of the bank. Later there were allegations that powerful overseas criminals had double-crossed the Quinns and taken these assets out of the control of not just the bank but the family. Court cases crisscrossing jurisdictions took place as the bank tried to get back control of these assets and their substantial rent rolls.

Alan Dukes: There was the Ukraine, Russia and India and a whole complex of companies that went from Ireland to Sweden to the Persian Gulf to India to the Ukraine. It was pretty clear at one stage that the Quinns had gotten double-crossed by some of the people they were dealing with in the Ukraine. I think they got themselves into a nest of vipers that they didn’t know how to deal with. I don’t know if they were double-crossed by anybody else they met along the way. But certainly Richard (Woodhouse) and the bank put a huge amount of work into tracking where the assets were and what the flows of funds in and out of those assets and companies were, there was a complex of company structures that were designed to hide where monies were going and where the ownership of assets resided. I am not sure at this point whether even the liquidators (of IBRC), who now have an agreement with the Quinn family, know everything they should know.

Sean Quinn’s children have now settled their action against the former Anglo Irish bank. Dukes says he does not know the terms of the agreement.

TL: Were you surprised at the settlement between the Quinns and IBRC liquidators?

AD: There was a point before the bank was liquidated where overtures were made about whether an agreement could be reached so we could avoid going the whole way with a court case. We considered it. But we didn’t feel it was an appropriate thing to do. But because of the sensitivity of the thing and the public profile of it we told the Department of Finance, that approach had been made.

TL: Was that approach made by a close associate of a well-known Irish businessman?

AD: I can’t honestly remember. I know an approach was made on the behalf of the Quinn family to see could we come to an agreement for a settlement that would have provided a certain amount of funding that would be guaranteed to the Quinn family. At that stage we were not inclined to go down that road. But we felt given the amounts of money involved, the sensitivity of the issue, the high-profile nature of the issue that we should tell the then Minister for Finance Michael Noonan. The reply that we got from the Department was that we had to make up our own minds about it. The bottom line was the department didn’t want to take a position on it. We decided then we won’t go down that road (towards a settlement). We will continue with the litigation.

Dukes said he did not know if a named specific businessperson was the go-between between IBRC and Sean Quinn. This person did not respond to questions from The Currency.

TL: Is it true that the deal the Quinns were looking for was worth €200 million?

I am not privy to what passed between the liquidators and the Quinns more recently. They have arrived at some accommodation, but I am not privy to what happened.

AD: I don’t think I should say what they were looking for. They were looking for a sizeable amount of money.

TL: Was it €200 million to settle everything?

AD: I would rather not say. We felt we could not defend the amount being asked for, given where we were at the time. We were still finding out more about the assets and flows of funds into and out of the various assets overseas. We didn’t feel it would be appropriate at that stage to settle the matter in that way so the litigation continued. I am not privy to what passed between the liquidators and the Quinns more recently. They have arrived at some accommodation, but I am not privy to what happened.

TL: Sean Quinn’s nephew Peter Darragh Quinn…He was, it was alleged by the bank in court, involved in an asset stripping scheme in relation to Quinn family properties. He was found guilty of contempt of court in 2012 but he left the jurisdiction before he could be sent to jail. Do you think that it is extraordinary that nothing has ever happened to him? He has been reported at times to be living just over the other side of the border…

AD: It is really odd. Part of the whole picture was that there was an admitted enterprise to keep assets and information about assets away from the bank and to keep funds that were flowing from those assets away from the bank. It took a while for that to be admitted to in court but prior to the liquidation of the bank, we were absolutely convinced that that was going on. The kind of detective work that went on to establish that, was a costly business.

TL: It cost in the tens of millions of euro.

AD: Yes. It even got to the point where we agreed to an arrangement with a high-profile debt collector in Russia called A1. This wasn’t the kind, of course, you would normally take but we felt we had to.

TL: Who suggested A1?

AD: We asked for advice from various people in the financial sector as to what kind of company could help us with this.

TL: Was it other banks based in Russia and/or the Ukraine?

AD: Yes. This was one of the recommendations that was made to us. We checked it out both diplomatically and in other ways. We were told that this was a very effective company and that they had a track record in getting control and knowledge of assets and so on. An agreement was made with that company which was a kind of a revenue sharing agreement. I don’t know what happened to it after the bank was liquidated.

Sustained sabotage and violence, sustained inaction

“They (management of QIH) have done an exemplary job in keeping that group of businesses functioning and operating profitably.”

In April 2011, shortly after executives from the former Anglo Irish Bank informed a shocked Sean Quinn that they were seizing control of his sprawling industrial conglomerate, a dumper truck was driven into bollards at the headquarters of the Quinn Group in Derrylin, Co Fermanagh. It was the first of many incidents, and the scale and violence has only intensified.

Up until the public outrage at the assault on Kevin Lunney, it was striking that, despite more than 70 specific incidents being reported to the authorities between 2011 and 2019, there had been little progress in identifying who was responsible for or who was behind the spate of attacks.

“With that kind of omerta going on I know it is a difficult job policing. But when there are cases when identified people have made threats then I think that the directors of the company have been let down.”

TL: Once the attacks started do you think the authorities could have come down harder from day one. Shut down the Facebook posts, took down the posters and pursued the physical attacks harder…

AD: The sabotage incidents started fairly quickly after we took over the assets. It was very difficult to find out who was responsible for it. The story that we forget about this is that a lot of people probably knew who was behind those attacks, but they weren’t prepared to say anything about it. It was much later (after Dukes was no longer involved) that Kevin Lunney and Liam McCaffrey were attacked in a service station. At the time it was public knowledge that they knew who had attacked them and that there were witnesses to it. It didn’t seem that anything was done to act on that. Before that awful attack on Kevin Lunney, several attacks or threats had been made face to face to people in the company. Death threats. They had been reported to the guards. The people making the threats were identified and nothing seems to have happened. I think Michael D’Arcy was right when he said that Kevin Lunney and the co-directors of the company seem to have been badly served by the guards and by the PSNI when nothing seemed to have come from those incidents.

TL: The attacks went on for years. Might it have been different if the authorities had come down harder from the first attack on?

AD: I think there was enough information to make life very difficult for people who were involved in that kind of activity earlier. I know the other incidents that happened; telegraph poles being cut; trucks set on fire; machinery damaged and posters stuck up. My understanding is that a lot of people in the area probably know who was doing those things and just won’t say. With that kind of omerta going on I know it is a difficult job policing. But when there are cases when identified people have made threats then I think that the directors of the company have been let down.

TL: Has there been enough political leadership? Could people have said more sooner?

AD: Apparently there has been an awful lot of silence and a good deal of inaction, it seems, by the police on both sides of the border. Operationally, (politicians and police) are independent. (The police North and South) shouldn’t be waiting for political instruction.

“I think that recent measures have been taken to reinforce the garda presence in the border area and an armed response unit has been located up there. It would seem to me that should have been done some time ago.”

Alan Dukes

TL: Understandably, Garda resources are now focused on capturing the criminals who tortured Kevin Lunny. At some point however should there be a review of why more wasn’t done sooner?

AD: Yes. I have listened to Garda spokesmen over the last few weeks talking about how they don’t have resources to do the kind of job they want to do. Now they seem to have the resources. I think that recent measures have been taken to reinforce the garda presence in the border area and an armed response unit has been located up there. It would seem to me that should have been done some time ago. There are plenty of other cases in the Border area where a lot of people know who the perpetrators of various crimes are but are afraid to say. I know it is easy for me to take that view (in Dublin) but as long as people say nothing then it will continue.

TL: What did you think when you saw Kevin Lunney’s interview on BBC talking about his ordeal?

AD: It was a serious injustice to a man whose role in all of this has been constructive and honourable. Kevin Lunney was one of the people – as I understand it – who tried to convince Sean Quinn not to get involved in gambling on the bank shares through CFDs and pleaded with him to stop but wasn’t listened to. They (management of QIH) have done an exemplary job in keeping that group of businesses functioning and operating profitably. In the light of what he has had to put up with that was an extraordinarily courageous thing for him to do.

Deconstructing Quinn’s legacy

An emotional Sean Quinn pictured on stage during a rally in support of his family in Ballyconnell, Co Cavan in 2012. Photo: Laura Hutton/Photocall Ireland

Our conversation moves away from the attacks and back to Ireland’s former richest man Sean Quinn. We are coming towards the end of the interview and I want to ask Dukes how he thinks Quinn will be seen by historians versus commentators today.

AD: My view is Sean Quinn showed enormous flair and ability in building up a group of companies involved in a range of activities starting in building materials and moving out from there into glass. I think his decision to set up an insurance company was a respectable business decision. Now, as it turned out when the company moved into the market in the UK made some very unwise business decisions but up to the point in time when he started gambling in bank shares it was all a positive story. Sean Quinn seems to have a kind of messiah complex as he believes he is the only person who can run those companies and make a success of them. That is probably a common conceit in a lot of businesspeople. Sean’s huge mistake was to get involved in gambling on shares in Anglo Irish Bank.

“Sean Quinn’s legacy will be that he built a very respectable enterprise and then ruined it by gambling.”

Alan Dukes

TL: Was it to any extent an honest mistake? Sean Quinn was let down by the Central Bank which was clearly not regulating Anglo.

AD: I am not sure that I would go along with that. Before the whole Anglo misadventure happened, Sean Quinn had already been burnt in the dotcom time by gambling. I think he should have learned a lesson from that. The means he chose to bet on Anglo was a chancey kind of a method. From fairly early on he was having to meet margin calls. But he continued acquiring more shares even when the tide had turned against him. He was consciously taking a big risk, the kind of risk that he had previously taken (on tech stocks) which had worked out badly for him. In addition to that, he was misusing finance from some of the companies in the group to support his gamble. Sean Quinn’s legacy will be that he built a very respectable enterprise and then ruined it by gambling. And then, after that, he and the family engaged in an enterprise to try to hide assets from their creditors. That is a serious negative.