Digifone adviser ‘never met Lowry’

FORMER Esat Digifone legal expert Jarleth Burke told the resumed Moriarty Tribunal yesterday he had never had any contact with Michael Lowry, Minister for Communications during the competition for the country’s second mobile phone licence in 1995.

For the minister to contact him would be “extraordinary, out of the blue and unexpected”, Mr Burke told Rossa Fanning BL, for Mr Lowry.

Equally, it would be “extraordinary, out of the blue and unexpected” for civil servants involved in the process to have sent him a document.

The tribunal is probing how the first page of a draft letter sent in July 1995 to Mr Lowry by Karel Van Miert, then EU Competition Commissioner, ended up in Mr Burke’s files. The document dealt with the GSM licence fee negotiations between the EU and the department.

Only the first page of two pages of the Brussels document was discovered in Mr Burke’s files when Digifone was sold to British Telecom. No cover note was attached and the details of how the faxed document was sent seemed to have been “topped and tailed”, according to tribunal lawyers.

Chairman Mr Justice Michael Moriarty said it seemed a bit improbable there was no cover note, just one page, and that the letter was incomplete.

Earlier tribunal counsel John Coughlan SC said he found it “incredible” Mr Burke would not remember getting a document from an EU commissioner addressed to a minister of a member state.

Meanwhile, the tribunal may ask the Oireachtas to indemnify the former owner of the Danish consultancy firm that helped department officials in the GSM2 process. Despite a number of requests, Michael Andersen refuses to testify at Dublin Castle, claiming the new owners of Andersen Management International threaten to take legal action against him if he gives evidence.

Eoin McGonigal SC, for Denis O’Brien, who headed the Digifone consortium that won the GSM2 licence, said Mr Andersen’s evidence was essential. The tribunal would not be able to reach definitive conclusions about the second mobile phone process was conducted if he didn’t testify.

In evidence yesterday, Mr Burke insisted the Van Miert letter did not confer any advantage on Esat Digifone. As he did not regard the document as significant, he could not recall how he received the first page of the letter. Mr Burke argued the document was not significant and Digifone’s competitors could have got the information if they had looked for it.