21 July 2012 Last updated at 21:52

Quinn family respond to prison sentences

Peter Darragh Quinn is a nephew of the bankrupt former billionaire Sean Quinn

The Quinn family have responded to jail sentences handed down to Sean Quinn Jnr and his cousin Peter Darragh Quinn.

The son of bankrupt billionaire Sean Quinn started an indefinite sentence in Mountjoy prison on Friday for hiding millions from a bank owed £2bn.

In a statement issued to RTE News, the family said the "real perpetrators continue to walk free".

Meanwhile, the search for Peter Darragh Quinn continues after he failed to appear in court for sentencing.

A warrant for his arrest was been issued by the High Court in Dublin. He was given the same sentence as his cousin Sean Quinn junior.

The family statement read: "Ireland today is imprisoning people who have been defrauded of millions by banks whom they have never met or never borrowed a penny from."

Sean Quinn avoided jail but must co-operate with the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation within three months.

Sean jnr will serve out the remainder of his sentence at the training unit of Mountjoy prison.

It is a semi-open low security facility.

'Almost medieval'

Both he and Peter Darragh Quinn will be jailed until the contempt of court in breaching an order not to put 500m euro of overseas property assets beyond the reach of the former Anglo Irish bank is purged.

Counsel for the Quinns said this was 'almost medieval'.

The three had breached a court order by putting international property beyond the reach of the IBRC.

They were found to be in contempt of court in June.

At that time, the judge ordered them to reverse the movement of assets out of the reach of the IRBC, the state-owned former Anglo Irish Bank.

The Irish state bailed out the Anglo Irish bank when it failed and the IBRC's function is now to recover money for the Irish taxpayer.

The bank is owed £2bn by Sean Quinn and sought to recover some of that from property owned by Quinn in Russia and Ukraine.

However, the bank found itself locked out of the company that controlled the Quinn property portfolio and found that the money and ownership was disappearing into a network of companies across the world.

At the height of his success, Sean Quinn was the 12th richest man in the UK and the richest in Ireland, employing thousands, mostly in the previously job-starved cross-border area of Fermanagh and Cavan.

In April 2011, control of his business empire passed into the hands of the IBRC.

Later that year Sean Quinn declared himself bankrupt in a Belfast court, making him the biggest bankrupt in UK history.

The IBRC challenged his right to bankruptcy in the UK and successfully fought to transfer him to the jurisdiction of courts in the Irish Republic.