By Michael O’Farrell
Investigations Editor
Sean Quinn’s son-in-law sold off more than €50m worth of Russian property in a frantic two-week blitz last summer, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The deals were all carried out as Anglo Irish Bank – now IBRC – was trying to seize Quinn assets to help pay back the family’s debts.
As a result, Irish taxpayers are unlikely to get their hands on the portfolio of Irish property.
Details of the seven transactions – all signed by Stephen Kelly, husband of Mr Quinn’s daughter Aoife – have never before been published.
But an MoS trawl of Russian company records and other related papers can today reveal the extent of Mr Kelly’s involvement in the Quinn family’s asset transfers.
Mr Kelly, an accountant by profession, is originally from south Dublin and is the son of a Mary and Paul Kelly who operate a school bus run.
Since marrying Aoife Quinn in 2009 he has joined a vast cat and mouse game played across the globe as his in-laws tried to hide as much of their wealth as possible.
Much has been made of the fate of the Quinns’ larger landmark assets such as the Ukrainian shopping centre and the Kutuzoff office block in Russia, especially as those assets were pledged as security to Anglo.
But the Quinns also pursued a strategy of moving unsecured assets out of reach, as Peter Quinn, a nephew of Seán Quinn, admitted in court during proceedings against the family.
In his testimony, Peter Quinn said he believed IBRC would be focused on the ‘big-ticket’ properties and that the lesser, unsecured assets ‘would be the easiest things… to get for the benefit of the Quinn family’.
Today, the MoS can reveal precisely what he meant and detail how seven unsecured Russian properties worth between €1m and €25m each were put out of reach by the Quinns and Stephen Kelly.
Although they were not pledged to the IBRC for any particular loan, the assets could nevertheless have gone towards settling millions owed to the bank.
And they are now covered by court instructions ordering the Quinns to reverse or undo moves made to put assets out of reach.
All of the transactions took place between May 18 and June 2, 2011, and were signed by Stephen Kelly who had been given power of attorney over the Russian companies that owned the properties.
On May 18, 2011, Mr Kelly signed for the sale of a company called Stroicom LLC in the oil-rich republic of Tatarstan 800 miles east of Moscow.
Stroicom LLC was established in 2006 and owns a partially constructed site in the city of Naberezhnye Chelny – the republic’s second largest city.
The Quinn site is estimated to be worth in the region of €1.6m but upon Mr Kelly’s signature it was sold to a new company owned by an Oleg Ogarkov. From there it is unknown what became of the asset’s ownership.
However, as with the other sales signed by Mr Kelly and members of the wider Quinn family, IBRC has concluded that the moves were designed to keep ownership within the Quinn family and away from creditors.
On May 19, 2011, Mr Kelly sold another Quinn company called Business Park LLC which is based in the capital city of the Russian Republic of Bashkortostan.
Business Park LLC owns an operational DIY retail outlet in Ufa which is operated by the Castorma Group, part of the international Kingfisher DIY group which also runs the B&Q stores in Ireland.
The store is worth up to €25m but was sold for just €2,500 to a Russian company which has since assigned the asset elsewhere.
On the same day – May 19, 2011 – Stephen Kelly sold another Quinn firm, Stroitland LLC. This company owns a partially completed retail unit in Nizhny Novgorod, the fifth largest city in Russia.
And just five days later, on May 24, Mr Kelly signed the sale documents for yet another company – this time in the capital city of Russia’s Southern Federal District, Rostov on Don.
The company, called ADK LLC owns a development site which is worth €10.6m and yet again the new owner was a heretofore unknown Russian, Sedih Nikolay.
Two days later another Russian company, StroiTorgCentr LLC, was sold. This time the asset involved a site worth just under €1m in the city of Yekaterinburg.
The company was sold in the same manner as the others, this time to a Vladimir Dedov.
But it emerged during evidence at the recent Quinn contempt trial that the asset was transferred on and is now owned by a company in Belize which was set up for Peter Quinn by a Dubai associate.
A week later, on June 2, Stephen Kelly signed for yet another sale, this time for East Point Logistic in Moscow which owned a 20-hectare greenfield site zoned for a logistics park worth an estimated €6.5m.
And on the same day he also sold another Moscow company called Zao Metropolis LLC which owned a semi-complete retail and hotel project in a Moscow suburb. The buyer was Vladimir Dedov, the new owner of StroiTorgCentr LLC.
All told, the seven deals saw assets worth more than €50m leave the ownership of the Quinn family.
But the IBRC has told the High Court that it will seek to appoint a receiver to the worldwide assets of the five Quinn children and their spouses when the family is back in court on July 20.
At that point, some of the Quinns will also find out whether they will be jailed – a fate that will depend on whether they can show the judge they have, as ordered, made progress in making their assets available to the IBRC.
Last night the family declined to answer specific MoS questions about the Russian deals and whether the family was cooperating with the bank.
Their lawyer said it would be ‘inappropriate’ for the family to address ‘certain questions’ because they ‘are all subject to coercive orders of Ms Justice Dunne and as such they remain obliged to take certain steps to comply with those orders’.
