While Sean Quinn Sr, once Ireland's richest man, goes to jail in Dublin for diverting assets placed under court injunction, bne enquiries indicate that one of the assets in question, Kyiv's Ukraina shopping mall, has been pulled into the orbit of the family of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych – and out of the reach of Ireland's authorities who claim it.
Ireland has been following on tenterhooks the slow motion fall of
tycoon Sean Quinn Sr, formerly Ireland’s richest man but now a bankrupt
jailbird. Part of the action has been set in Ukraine, including the
drama’s top-rating “episode”: a hidden camera showing secret talks in
Kyiv in January between Quinn family members and shadowy off-camera
Ukrainians, which was leaked to press in July. The talks centred on the
fate of the Ukraina shopping mall in the heart of Kyiv, which Sean Quinn
owned, and which Ireland’s state-owned bank that was set up to try to
clean up the mess of bad loans caused by the financial crisis is trying
to recover, in lieu of Quinn’s $3.5bn debt.
