Campaign against QIH: ‘Someone is paying money to make this happen’
A campaign of intimidation against executives at Quinn Industrial Holdings (QIH) has not ended despite public outrage and increased security following a savage attack on the company’s chief operations officer last month.
Tony Lunney, brother of victim Kevin Lunney, said plastic protecting bales of hay belonging to another brother were slashed a few weeks ago, after the attack that left Kevin with life-changing injuries.
“There seems to be still a lot of anger out there,” Tony told RTÉ’s Prime Time. “I don’t know what it is, crazy stuff. The bales are a symptom of what is still out there.”
Tony said he did not know if Kevin was alive when he came across his burning car after receiving a call alerting him to the blaze on September 23.
“I didn’t know,” he said.
It was just a complete ball of flames. You couldn’t see anything... It was just unbelievable the fireball it was in.
“And then the fire brigade came and I went back down and said ‘is there anyone in the vehicle?’ and he confirmed there was no one in it.”
Tony said it was “a miracle” his brother had survived, and that he would have died if he had not managed to crawl to a crossroads 150m away where a man driving a tractor had spotted him.
Kevin was abducted outside his Fermanagh home by four masked men who broke his leg in two places, slashed him with a knife, and removed finger nails and doused him with bleach to remove their DNA.
The attack was part of a campaign of intimidation against the senior executives at QIH, ongoing since 2015.
Asked if the company could continue in light of the risks to its executives, CEO Liam McCaffrey said they would need to” assess and balance the risks”.
“We cannot continue to work here in the longer term if our lives are at stake, it’s a simple as that,” he said.
Asked if he was afraid the outrage in relation to the attack would die down, he said they were “terribly worried”.
“The fear is they will identify and charge some of the footsoldiers without getting to the crux of the matter because someone is paying money to make this happen,” Mr McCaffrey said.
Tony said his brother was “in good spirits”, although his leg left him in a lot of pain.
Asked if Kevin was likely to return to QIH, Mr McCaffrey said: “I think he probably will.”
