The children and other family members of jailed businessman Seán Quinn have been ordered to pay the legal costs of an application for their cross-examination at the Commercial Court next month concerning their bank accounts and assets.
Mr Justice Peter Kelly yesterday granted an application by Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC), formerly Anglo Irish Bank, for the costs of hearing of the application for leave to cross-examine. He placed a stay on the costs order pending the outcome of the bank’s action against the Quinns.
Ross Aylward, for the Quinns, had asked the judge not to award costs pending the outcome of the cross-examination, including a decision on whether his clients had provided all the documents they could.
Barry O’Donnell, for IBRC, said it was entitled to costs in circumstances including where more documents were provided on the eve of the application hearing despite a “strenuous” assertion previously that full disclosure had been made.
The judge said the issue of whether there was full disclosure was separate to whether cross-examination should be permitted. The bank’s application for leave to cross-examine had been opposed “on every conceivable ground”, he added.
Having succeeded in getting leave, IBRC was entitled to its costs with a stay on that order pending the case’s outcome.
The cross-examination will proceed on January 24th and 25th next.
The bank sought cross-examination as part of its efforts to protect assets in the Quinns’ international property group.
Mr Justice Kelly last week directed cross-examination of Seán Quinn jnr; his sisters Aoife, Ciara, Brenda and Colette; his wife, Karen Woods; and brother-in-law, Niall McPartland.
