Billionaire denies paying former minister ‘one red cent’

BUSINESSMAN Denis O’Brien denied ever paying a red cent to former communications minister Michael Lowry and claimed he had won the state’s second mobile phone licence fairly.

The telecoms billionaire rounded on the Moriarty Tribunal claiming its report was “fundamentally flawed” and called on the judiciary to investigate the inquiry’s chairperson and legal team.

Suggestions in the report that payments in the mid 1990s totalling almost stg£900,000 through circuitous routes had gone from accounts in his name to Mr Lowry’s were “total wrong”, Mr O’Brien added.