Documentary series Quinn Country last night revealed details of an agreement between US bondholders, owed more than €1 billion, and a management buy-out team who took control of businesses formerly owned by Sean Quinn following two years of violence and destruction.
Liquidators took control of the Quinn Group, now known as Mannok, in April 2011. It emerged the company owed approximately €2.3bn to the Irish state, largely as a result of disastrous bets on Anglo Irish Bank. A further €1.2bn was owed to United States bondholders.
In early 2014, John McCartin, a Leitrim Fine Gael councillor, businessman and a one-time close friend of Sean Quinn, came to the former billionaire and said a deal could be done.
The deal involved buying the manufacturing business, which Mr Quinn described as “sweet music to my ears”. He believed the company was going to “come back to the family and the community”.
A meeting was held of those individuals involved in a new consortium, including former directors of the Quinn group. The consortium would be named the Quinn Business Retention Company (QBRC).
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In a recording obtained by the documentary, those involved in the meeting talked of keeping the company local and, at some point, allowing Mr Quinn to take back control.
At the time, there were deals in the pipeline, including to sell off the glass business to an English company. The new consortium persuaded the English business not to buy the company.
In the spring of 2014, Kevin Lagan, head of the Lagan Group, was involved in the possible purchase of the former Quinn Group’s roof tile business. Over the course of one weekend, his companies were attacked, north and south, causing over €1m worth of damage.
Mr Lagan also received a death threat, which arrived on the same day that his wife passed away. He pulled out of the deal.
The US bondholders, owed just over €1.2bn, began to enter negotiations with QBRC.
Details of a 140-page agreement between the bondholders and QBRC are revealed in the programme.
The agreement included the takeover by the consortium of the cement and packaging businesses, but not the glass factory.
Mr Quinn believed he was on the way to be back in charge, even arriving at the company headquarters and serving drinks to cheering employees in early 2015.
But the bondholders did not want Mr Quinn in control. He was a consultant with some control over sales but no involvement with finance or other management.
“As far as I was concerned, I was completely in control,” Mr Quinn said, adding that “day by day, week by week, I could see there was something wrong”. There was nobody reporting to the former boss.
Relations between Mr Quinn and the directors of the new company quickly deteriorated. Then the glass business was sold, leading to Mr Quinn walking away.
Mr Quinn said local people were asking why he was pushed out and that led to "some getting wrong ideas in their head".
Violence and intimidation returned and the targets were the management team that had worked with Mr Quinn for years, including chief operating officer of the new company, Kevin Lunney.
In February 2019, Mr Lunney was attacked by Fermanagh man James Bernard McGovern, later jailed for more than three years.
In September of that year, Kevin Lunney was abducted and tortured. Two months later, Cyril McGuinness, also known as 'Dublin Jimmy' and the chief suspect in the kidnapping, died in a police raid on his home in Buxton, Derbyshire.
In December last year, three men convicted of abducting and torturing Mr Lunney were given sentences ranging from 18 to 30 years by the Special Criminal Court in Dublin.
Sean Quinn has repeatedly said he had nothing to do with the attacks on Mr Lunney or the acts of sabotage against his former business.
