Sean Quinn documentary: Former tycoon admits significant wrongdoing in business affairs

Former business tycoon Sean Quinn has admitted wrongdoing in his business affairs that resulted in his empire being torn from his hands.

The Fermanagh man was speaking in a new three part documentary by Fine Point Films for RTE called Quinn Country.

Quinn tied his fortune and that of his businesses to the fate of Anglo-Irish Bank, making big bets on the bank’s share price as it tumbled to disaster. The state was forced to move in and begin the process of taking control of

Quinn’s businesses. What followed were protracted legal battles, a campaign of intimidation and violence, culminating in the horrific attack in 2019 on Seán Quinn’s former right-hand man, Kevin Lunney.

Speaking about his calamitous decision to invest heavily in Anglo Irish Bank, Mr Quinn said: "Other people in the office would have known we shouldn't have been doing it.

"I suppose it just sort of happened and again, maybe our system was a bit weak.

"And maybe we didn't have enough people just looking over this thing, and maybe I was too dominant a factor in this. And I suppose when I asked it to be done it was done."

His children feel that he has given away their fortune, he added.

"We have plenty of rows and I suppose they thought they were multi millionaires if not more and then their father gave it all away on them," he said.

The beginning of the end of his empire was when he began to take money out of his insurance business to cover major debts he incurred when massive investments in the Anglo Irish Bank turned sour.

"That was wrong, I shouldn't have done that," he said.

In the end he fought a losing battle over debts of nearly 3bn Euro with Anglo Irish Bank and the Irish courts.

The second episode finished with passionate scenes from a border protest in October 2012 where hundreds of people held up placards defending Sean Quinn in the face of the financial onslaught.

The documentary closed with a young woman from the platform telling the crowd:

"We will not be bullied or intimidated by Anglo [Irish Bank]. We will not go quietly into the night. Make no mistake about it. This is a war."

Alan Dukes was chairman of the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) at the time, which was created by the Irish government to bail the Anglo Irish Bank out and take it into public ownership.

"The specific hostility from that community in the border area, to my mind, is completely misdirected," he said.

In the first episode Mr Quinn said it was "beyond comprehension" that people who were his friends, his staff and his neighbours would blame his family for being involved in criminal activity and for abducting the businessman Kevin Lunney.

He said he accepted that his criticism of some of his former friends and staff had "created a toxic climate" but he said what has been done to him was wrong and that he wanted to tell his side of the story.

"They turn around now and blame us for being involved in criminal activity and abducting Kevin Lunney [which he firmly denies]. It's beyond comprehension that your own friends and your own staff and your own neighbours would do it to you."

In the documentary, Mr Quinn's wife Patricia also describes a local priest as a "backstabber".

The priest had condemned the abduction of Kevin Lunney from the pulpit and had called for the paymaster and the godfather behind it to be condemned.

Mr Dukes also described Mr Quinn as a man with an ego who saw himself as above the law and politics.

"He's not only above regulation, he's above politics," Mr Dukes said.

"He doesn't believe that politicians have any place in the world because he doesn't believe he needs anybody else to guide how he does business or to lay down rules for how you do business."

The third episode of Quinn Country will be shown on RTÉ One at 9.35pm on 30 November. All episodes can be seen on the RTÉ Player online.