Desmond stake in Esat was unknown

RUMOURS surfaced that financier Dermot Desmond was an Esat Digifone shareholder when the consortium won the competition for the country’s second mobile phone licence, the Moriarty Tribunal was told yesterday.

Mr Desmond’s 20% holding wasn’t made known to Department of Communications officials when the first series of negotiations to secure the GSM licence took place in early November 1995.

Senior civil servant Martin Brennan, who chaired the project group that evaluated the bids for the licence, said he was not aware of changes in the consortium’s shareholding. The department understood the consortium was a joint venture between Denis O’Brien’s Communicorp Group and Norwegian company Telenor, with 20% of the equity to be placed with institutions.