As his debts soared to billions of euros, Ireland's one-time richest man Sean Quinn admitted to the Republic's financial regulator that he needed to be "reined in" over his borrowings from the now defunct Anglo Irish Bank, the trial of three bankers heard on Friday.
Minutes of a meeting between Quinn and the regulator Pat Neary in 2008 – the year Anglo Irish and his own business empire started to crumble – revealed that the ex-billionaire also accepted he had "been greedy" in buying a share scheme in the bank, the court was told.
Referring to himself in the third person during the discussion with the Irish state's financial overseer, he said "Sean Quinn needs to be reined in", the jury was told inside Dublin's central criminal court.
During the trial of three Anglo Irish Bank executives – Sean FitzPatrick, Patrick Whelan and William McAteer – details emerged of how Sean Quinn became swamped with debts from loans he took to buy shares in the bank.
The trio are charged with making unlawful financial payments to 16 people in 2008, including Sean Quinn, who by the summer of that year owed €2.5bn (£2.1bn) in loans. All three men pleaded not guilty on Wednesday at the opening of what will be the longest trial in Irish criminal history and one of the biggest of its kind in Europe. The case is expected to last until the end of May and will involve hundreds of witnesses, and the examination of millions of documents.
Quinn borrowed billions not only to buy shares in the bank but to also fund a global property portfolio. The financial crisis in 2008, the world property crash and Anglo Irish Bank's collapse led to him being bankrupted. Anglo Irish Bank was rescued with billions of euros from Irish and European taxpayers and then nationalised. Quinn's losses personified the demise of the Celtic Tiger years of extraordinary growth much of it fuelled with easily available credit.
Although the bankrupted former billionaire turned up in court on Friday, most of the day was taken up with cross examination by one of the Anglo trio's lawyers of Quinn's former CEO Liam McCaffrey. Patrick Whelan's lawyer asked McCaffrey if Sean Quinn had lost billions on a "spectacular punt" on shares through contracts for difference, which are bets on future shares in a company.
The former head of the Quinn Group of companies replied: "He paid a very high price for investing in that bank."
The lawyer for Whelan, Brendan Grehan, said in 2008 the Quinn family had "handed over the keys of the shop" to the bank after it put its businesses up as security for further loans from Anglo Irish. Earlier the court heard that Quinn was "eternally optimistic" about the shares in Anglo Irish Bank recovering in price despite them plummeting in the year of the financial crash. Sean Quinn meanwhile is now expected to give evidence at the trial on Monday morning. The case continues.
