Sean Quinn's wife must pay back €3m Anglo Irish bank loan

Judge rejects claim Patricia Quinn was unduly influenced by tycoon husband and did not understand bank agreement she signed
Anglo Irish Bank
Anglo Irish Bank, from which the Quinn's borrowed money before Sean Quinn's bankruptcy. Photograph: Peter Muhly/AFP/Getty Images

An Irish court has ordered the wife of Ireland's one-time richest man Sean Quinn to pay back €3m (£2.5m) to the former Anglo Irish Bank.

Patricia Quinn must repay the money out of a loan she took out with her husband five years ago, Dublin high court ruled.

In her defence Patricia Quinn had claimed she was a homemaker for 36 years and did not even possess a basic knowledge of business matters. She denied she knew the details of what she was signing for when she signed the loan agreement and did not get the benefit of the money. But the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation – the name of the reformed Anglo Irish Bank – described her evidence as incredible.

She was a director of 63 Irish companies, a company secretary of 10 and that held directorships in 28 UK companies.

Her husband is the bankrupt billionaire whose rise and fall while playing the global property market personifies the collapse of Ireland's Celtic tiger economy. The 65-year-old Co Fermanagh-born business tycoon used to employ up to 5,000 people in construction and his family's insurance corporation. He is alleged to still control a property empire encompassing Russia, North America and the Middle East.

Last month Belfast high court declared him bankrupt over alleged debts believed to be worth €2.5bn to the Anglo Irish Bank. His choice of where to go bankrupt means he could be back in business within 12 months owing to Britain's financial laws. Had he been declared bankrupt south of the border under the Republic's more stringent bankruptcy laws he would have been waiting for 12 years. His fate is believed to among the biggest bankruptcy orders in the UK or Ireland.

In a Dublin court Mr Justice Kelly said a lot of criticism had been made of the credibility of Mrs Quinn's evidence.

He said for the purpose of this case he was going to set aside all questions of credibility and accept everything said in her sworn statements as accurate and truthful. But he said she had failed to make out an arguable defence to the claim by the bank for the repayment of the loan. He said even the most cursory glance at the documents she had signed would have told all but an illiterate person that she was entering into some form of borrowing agreement.

He also said she had been negligent by signing documents put in front of her without finding out their effect.

Kelly asked what could be more negligent than willy-nilly signing formal legal documents without giving a thought to their effect. He also said Mr Quinn's lawyers had argued that there was a presumption of undue influence in the relationship between husband and wife. In law there was not and had not been since 1750.

Kelly ruled that there was no evidence of undue influence by Mr Quinn. He said there was no evidence that Mrs Quinn suffered from an intellectual disability, a mental illness or cognitive impairment and there was no evidence at all of threats or bullying by her husband.

In relation to her argument that she did not receive the money, the judge said the question of whether it was used to complete the decoration of the Quinn home or for something else was a matter for the borrowers.

The loan was drawn down at the direction of Mr Quinn and was used.

The judge granted judgment to the bank for just over €3m. He refused an application by lawyers for Mrs Quinn for a stay on the order pending a possible appeal to the Republic's supreme court.