The High Court in Dublin has heard how Sean Quinn’s family used the Quinn group as their “personal bank”.

The court heard the family “raided” the group of almost €2 billion to fund significant losses from investments related to shares in Anglo Irish Bank, property acquisitions and lifestyle expenses.

Personal expenses including a €1 million bill for Ciara Quinn’s wedding in 2007 which was paid by the Sliabh Russell Hotel Ltd company and never repaid.

The Quinns took “far in excess” of what they were entitled to and jeopardised the financial stability of a group projected in 2010 as worth €3 billion when it was in fact insolvent said Mr. Gallagher.

The Quinn group was “wholly insolvent” in 2011 but the evidence will be the companies were insolvent much earlier but that went unnoticed by banks and bondholders because significant transactions in the accounts were “falsified”, he said.

The five adult Quinn children are presented as “naive and unsophisticated” but they engaged in complex and sophisticated transactions, he said.

They also “orchestrated” a “sophisticated and devious fraud” involving taking assets from the Quinn international property group intended to go towards repaying €2.3 billion owed to Anglo, he said.

Against this background, the children’s action disputing liability under personal guarantees and share charges concerning Anglo loans to Quinn companies on grounds including the bank acted in an “unconscionable” way is “extraordinary” and “beggars belief”.

Mr. Gallagher was setting out the opening statement by IBRC, into which Anglo was nationalised following its collapse, opposing the case in which Aoife, Brenda, Ciara, Colette and Sean Quinn Junior contend guarantees and share pledges signed by them are invalid and have no legal effect.

Mr. Gallagher said the children were seeking to impugn some, but not all, of a whole range of transactions arranged for their benefit and were not entitled to ignore a whole range of transactions, he said. Certain assets of the group were saved by Anglo loans which the children now sought to undermine.

The hearing continues.