Ireland’s former richest man declared bankrupt

Sean Quinn

BELFAST,  (Reuters) – Ireland’s former richest  man, Sean Quinn, was declared bankrupt yesterday after having  bet the family fortune on the shares of Ireland’s most  notoriously profligate bank just before it collapsed.
Quinn, 64, developed a quarrying operation in the northern  county of Fermanagh in 1973 into a global organisation with  insurance and property interests. He amassed a fortune of 4 billion euros ($5.4 billion),  before investing massively in the now failed Anglo Irish Bank,  one of the biggest casualties of Ireland’s property bubble.

Sean Quinn

“It is with great sadness and regret that I have applied for  voluntary bankruptcy in the High Court in Belfast today,” Quinn  said in a statement. A court spokesman confirmed the court had  declared him bankrupt.

“He doesn’t have any ability to pay his debts at this time,”  Quinn’s solicitor, John Gordon, told Ireland’s state broadcaster  RTE. “He is left with very minimal assets.”

At the height of the Celtic Tiger property boom in 2008, the  Sunday Times rich list named him Ireland’s richest man with a  fortune then estimated at 3.73 billion pounds, worth 4.7 billion  euros at the time.

Quinn was known for jetting around eastern Europe with a  team of lawyers to seal multi-million-euro property deals, but  he kept a much lower profile than many of his fellow property  tycoons, with few conspicuous displays of wealth.