A few years ago, Sean Quinn was ranked among the two hundred richest people in the world, with a personal fortune of some $6 billion. Today he is bust, and his businesses have been taken from him. His efforts to keep his assets from his creditors have seen him sent to jail for contempt of court. He and his family remain embroiled in one of the biggest and most dramatic legal battles in Irish history. And that battle has caused perhaps the most intense and emotive debate over the merits of a single Irishman since Roy Keane left Saipan.
How did it all happen? In Citizen Quinn, Ian Kehoe and Gavin Daly trace the remarkable life of the 'simple farmer's son' who made most of his money through guts and graft long before the excesses of the Celtic Tiger, who brought economic vibrancy to a depressed border region, and who then lost it all through a multi-billion-euro gamble on the shares of the world's most toxic bank. Drawing on exclusive sources close to Quinn, his businesses and his creditors, they chronicle the remarkable battle that has unfolded between the Quinn family, Anglo Irish Bank, and the Irish state. Citizen Quinn tells the most extraordinary single story of the Irish crash.