Accountant questioned

ACCOUNTANT Donal Buggy told the resumed Moriarty Tribunal hearing yesterday the Department of Communications asked him to carry out a financial analysis of the Denis O’Brien-led Esat Digifone consortium just days before the State’s second mobile phone licence was issued.

Department bosses wanted to determine whether all the shareholders backing the project were financially strong enough to set up, run the new GSM2 network and provide their stated level of service to customers.

A particular focus was whether other consortium members could finance Communicorp's share of Digifone's funding requirements in the event of Communicorp not being able to finance its own share.