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Ex-billionaire Sean Quinn awaits jail ruling
Sean Quinn has been found guilty of contempt of court in Dublin
The bankrupt former billionaire, Sean Quinn, will find out later on Friday if he will be jailed.
Quinn, his son Sean Jr and nephew Peter Darragh Quinn were found in contempt of court for putting assets beyond the reach of the former Anglo-Irish Bank.
Judge Elizabeth Dunne told Dublin's High Court on Tuesday their behaviour was deceitful and blatantly dishonest.
She said they had taken every step possible to frustrate the bank.
And she warned them that given the seriousness of the contempt case, it would be difficult to persuade her against enforcing action with "a punitive element as well as coercive".
Analysis
The three men can either appeal the judgement to the Supreme Court or comply with the court orders and help the IBRC recover its money.
It has been reported that if they don't want to purge their contempt they can simply cross the border to Northern Ireland - there is no extradition for contempt because it's judge-made rather than statutory law.
That, it must said though, is believed to be an unlikely scenario.
In the Irish Republic, the normal jail term for contempt is a month behind bars, but a precedent was set in February in England, another common law jurisdiction, where a judge jailed a Kazakh billionaire for 22 months for contempt and breaching court orders.
However, he fled the UK and went into hiding.
All three were found to have defied a High Court order over the family's international property portfolio.
The former Anglo Irish Bank, now the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC), had wanted to take the properties to help settle Mr Quinn's debts of almost £2bn.
The judge said the three men had taken every step possible to frustrate the IBRC as it tried to recover nearly 500m euros of assets in Russia and Ukraine.
Lawyers for the two sides have been meeting since Tuesday's ruling to discuss how the IBRC might get its money back.
Depending on the judge's view of these negotiations, the three men will find out on Friday whether they will be jailed.
The two sides have been fighting each other in courts around the world as the IBRC tries to reclaim money it claims the Irish taxpayer is owed.
The Quinns are suing the IBRC in a separate legal action for 2.3m euros, claiming the bank acted illegally in lending the family money to protect the former Anglo-Irish Bank's collapsing share price.
This case has yet to go to a full hearing.
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