Quinn directors hold secret UK meeting on future
John McCartin pushed to run as FG candidate in general election
THE directors of Quinn Industrial Holdings (QIH) have met the company’s American investors, under tight security at a secret location in the UK, for the first time since the attack on Kevin Lunney.
Liam McCaffrey, the chief executive, Dara O’Reilly, the chief financial officer, and John McCartin, non-executive director, travelled to London for the first board meeting since the violent attack on Mr Lunney.
Directors declined to comment on the meeting when contacted by the Sunday Independent. Sources said the overwhelming message was “business as usual at Quinn Industrial Holdings”, despite a campaign of intimidation apparently intent on driving out the American investors and the management team. The business’s chairman previously warned that the company could close if the intimidation continued.
Mr Lunney and his brother, Tony, did not attend the board meeting as they are not directors of the holding company, although they are directors of other Quinn businesses. All five directors have been living under police protection since the attack on Mr Lunney in September and have been warned twice to resign from the company or face a “permanent solution”.
The security around the meeting was considered paramount because of the risk of a repeat attack on one or some of the QIH directors. The last board meeting was due to be held in Dublin on September 18. The night before, Kevin Lunney was abducted and tortured in Fermanagh on his way home from work, in an attack deliberately timed to coincide with the meeting with investors.
John McCartin, who has been vocal in his condemnation of the violence and the “paymaster” behind it, is being touted as a Fine Gael candidate in the forthcoming general election. Mr McCartin stood down as a Fine Gael councillor in the local elections in May. However, the party wants him to run in the Sligo Leitrim constituency, alongside Senator Frankie Feighan. He is close to the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, who made a point of meeting with the directors after they were issued with a second death threat last month.
Mr McCartin told the Sunday Independent yesterday that he had been immersed in the fall-out from the attack on Kevin Lunney and was not aware his candidacy was being discussed in the party.
The Sunday Independent can also reveal that among four men arrested last Friday in connection with the attack on Mr Lunney are two Dubliners suspected of abducting and torturing him. The torture included breaking his legs, slashing him, carving the initials QIH on his chest, and delivering the death threat.
A third man from Dublin was arrested on suspicion of burning Mr Lunney’s car and a second vehicle used in the attack, in order to destroy evidence.
Gardai suspect all three Dublin men were hired and paid for by Cyril McGuinness, the criminal who collapsed and died when police raided the property in Derbyshire where he had been in hiding since the police investigation.
A fourth man — a 66-yearold from Cavan believed to be a close associate of Cyril McGuinness — was also arrested. He is suspected of playing a key role on the night of the attack. All four men remained in garda custody yesterday.
Gardai are still working to unmask the person they believe commissioned McGuinness, a career criminal, to organise the attack on Mr Lunney, and provided the instructions that Mr Lunney and directors were to resign from QIH or be shot.
Informed sources said searches of more than 15 homes and properties since the attack on Kevin Lunney have generated a wealth of evidence, including material recovered from Cyril McGuinness’s house that leads back to an individual in Cavan.
The attack on Mr Lunney is regarded as an escalation of a sustained campaign of violence and intimidation on the businesses formerly owned by Sean Quinn, once Ireland’s richest man, who lost control of his empire in 2011.
He returned to his cement and concrete businesses as a €500,000-a-year consultant in 2015, after it was bought by three American funds, Contrarian Capital, Brigade Capital and Silver Point. Quinn’s old management team were installed to run it. The investors excluded Mr Quinn from being directly employed by or having a stake in the business; Mr Quinn left the business, claiming he was “stabbed in the back” by his old management team. He wrote to the US investors in May this year, asking the investors to have him back.
Mr Quinn has repeatedly denounced the attacks on the companies, saying they are not carried out in his name. He has condemned the attack on Mr Lunney as “barbaric” and, as revealed by the Sunday Independent, has complained to the Vatican about local parish priest, Fr Oliver O’Reilly, for denouncing the “paymaster or paymasters” who funded the attack on Mr Lunney.
The Garda investigation is delving into the history of the campaign of criminal damage against the Quinn companies over the past eight years, including the threats to the current directors and to management teams who worked for the businesses in the past.