Quinn bounces back with online gambling venture

THE distinctive ‘Q’ branding is the main clue to the involvement of controversial Fermanagh businessman Sean Quinn Snr in a new online gambling venture that launched last night.

It is Sean Quinn Snr’s first significant commercial venture since the dramatic fall of Quinn Group and his own subsequent bankruptcy.

After emerging from bankruptcy in 2015, Mr Quinn is free to go back into business. The QuinnBet website and app offers gambling across a range of sports including horse and greyhound racing, football and GAA. QuinnBet describes itself as Ireland and the UK’s newest online sports book provider, with an online casino to launch in the coming weeks.

The website bears the distinctive ‘Q’ branding once seen across the former Quinn empire.

A spokesman confirmed that the business is wholly owned by Sean Quinn Snr, but said it will be run by his son Sean Quinn Jnr and other family members.

Filings with the company’s office list Sean Quinn Jnr, his brother-in-law Sean Kelly and Cavan businessman Seamus McMahon, of Kilconny, Belturbet as directors of the company behind the business.

Sean Quinn Snr was once Ireland’s richest man with an extensive industrial business involved in glass and aggregates, however, he and his family lost control of the business and Mr Quinn was eventually bankrupted following a series of massive failed bets on the stock market, in particular on shares in Anglo Irish Bank made using complex contracts for difference that resulted in massive debts.

The unravelling of the Anglo Irish Bank stake and of the Quinn Group has been played out through the courts for almost a decade.

In 2012 both Sean Quinn Snr and Sean Quinn Jnr were jailed for contempt, after failing to comply with court orders to reverse measures stripping mul- ti-million euro assets from their former international property group.

Sean Quinn Jnr subsequently purged his contempt by paying a sum of money.

QuinnBet’s website has been built by FSB, a UK company licensed and regulated by the UK Gambling Commission that provides online betting infrastructure to a number of brands as a so-called white label service.

QuinnBet said it is licensed in Ireland under the Betting (Amendment) Act 2015.