[The nGardai raid the Quinn gaff](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61168275)

**Gardaí (Irish police) have carried out searches at the home of former billionaire businessman Sean Quinn in County Cavan.**

The operation is part of an investigation into alleged criminal activity in Cavan and the wider border region.

No arrests have been made.

Officers based in Cavan and Monaghan arrived at the property in Ballyconnell at about 10:30 local time.

Gardaí said they were executing a search warrant at a domestic residence issued by a district court judge.

The police operation lasted more than three hours and evidence bags were seen being taken away.

Speaking to BBC News NI, Mr Quinn said he did not know why the police had come to his home.

“They said it was coercion, deception, harassment – stuff like that,” he said.

“So I asked them who was I harassing, this that and the other and they said: ‘Look we can’t tell you that. We just have to do our investigation but that’s what we’re here for.’

“They never mentioned anything about criminality. Unless harassment is criminality, they never mentioned anything like that at all,” he added.

Mr Quinn said he then told the gardaí: “It’s just a fishing expedition is all I can see because you can’t tell me why you’re here.

“So they said we’ll do the investigation and report back. So they took my phone, they took my diary and they took big boxes of stuff and went off with it.”

He claimed he was “no wiser now” than he had been three or four hours ago.

A gardaí spokesperson said that as this is an ongoing criminal investigation An Garda Síochána would not be making any further comment.

11 comments

  1. Rumours were flying earlier about the lads out at the Quinn house. It’s not looking good for the former billionaire-turned-gangster.

  5. Can’t hate the man, he employed a lot of my family in the 80s, 90s and 2000s, my mam and her husband built a house and its mortgage free now, gave me my first proper paid job with taxes and everything, in the early 90s when there was a thing about employing minorities, he gave jobs to fellas in Northern Ireland and people from Eastern Europe.

  7. I heard that there has been some massive stupid losing bets placed via Quinnbet over the last few weeks. Like 10K on a 150/1 outsider…. One way to clean the money hidden all those years ago

  9. Few Quinn apologists in here.

    Fair enough he certainly brought a lot of jobs and prosperity to Cavan and other border counties but he squandered all of that business with extremely risky financial decisions e.g. Contracts for Difference on Anglo shares and siphoning money away from Quinn Insurance to cover losses, which resulted in the collapse of the insurance group and a 2% levy that every Joe soap in Ireland now has to pay. People were lucky to still have a job after his empire was taken off him and he left €2bln of debt behind him, which he refuses to pay back despite having assets around the global that could partly discharge his debt.

    Plus the stories of his “business practises” around competitors and contract negotiation are well know and it’s clear he was allegedly hooked up with Cyril McGuinness for years before the Lunney case.

    So him creating jobs doesn’t really absolve him of these actions and especially doesn’t absolve him of the legal repercussions of allegedly organising a kidnapping of Kevin Lunney.

  10. Jaysus, be careful posting a BBC article as certain mods don’t recognise their journalistic integrity.

  11. My thoughts:

    (a) There were reports that the Quinn family invested their insurance gains in property in Ukraine, which IBRC was trying to take control of. I wonder who owns them now.

    (b) The husband of one of the Quinn girls went to the North to avoid an arrest warrant in Ireland. Did he ever come back?

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