Investors in new move to oust yoga guru Quinn as oil firm director

YOGA GURU Tony Quinn’s role as director of an oil company in Central America has come under fresh pressure after 70 shareholders backed a former director who is trying to oust him.

The shareholders yesterday signed a petition calling for the appointment of a receiver to the company, International Natural Energy (INE). The petition will be used by lawyers for a former director, Paul Marriott, in his legal moves to remove Mr Quinn from the board and open up the books of INE to legal scrutiny.

INE has earned more than $750 million (€537 million) in revenue from oil wells in the Central American state of Belize since 2005, but has never paid a dividend and shareholders are unable to trade their shares, the meeting heard yesterday.

Last Friday, the company abruptly postponed its agm planned for yesterday, claiming members had been subjected to threats and intimidation. The dissident group called an egm but was warned by the company this would be illegal. An informal meeting that went ahead yesterday lasted more than three hours and heard contributions by Mr Marriott, another disaffected former director, Sheila McCaffrey, and many shareholders.

Before the meeting, an associate of Mr Quinn’s, Patricia Fitzpatrick, urged arriving shareholders not to attend. She handed them a note from the board which said their attendance would have significant legal and financial implications for the company. Some left but the majority entered the meeting room.

Ms Fitzpatrick then sought to attend herself, saying she was a shareholder, but was told to leave. A brief standoff ensued, after which she consulted with a lawyer and then left the room.

Many of INE’s shareholders are Irish people who at one time attended Mr Quinns mind-training seminars and invested in what was then a speculative oil venture.

Mr Quinn was made a director several years after oil was struck and his involvement has become a source of contention between two rival groups of shareholders.

Last month, a court in the Caribbean found that Mr Quinn was in breach of his fiduciary duties to INE and ordered him to purchase Mr Marriott’s shareholding in accordance with an independent valuation of the company’s shares. The company has since obtained a stay on that order.

“Oil is forecast to go up another $30-$40 a barrel and yet we can’t sell our shares or get a dividend – it’s crazy,” one investor, Rob Henshall, told the meeting.

Mr Marriott said his legal action against the company was about principles rather than money. He said he would “keep going until the money runs out”, but warned shareholders they had to stand up for themselves.

Ms McCaffrey described herself as “practically destitute and penniless” after she was removed as a director. She claimed the company had a policy of keeping shareholders in the dark and said the majority of $10 million in shareholder loans by the company went to Mr Quinn and other directors. INE’s accounts for 2009 show spending of $1.1 million on “investigative and security expenses” and $1.3 million on legal expenses, she said. The company, which last held an agm in 2009, said it looked forward to having a “constructive meeting of members” at an agm on a new date.