Lowry denies paying off businessman

A BUSINESSMAN caught up in deals with former cabinet minister Michael Lowry was “paid off” to drop a series of actions amid an alleged bid to blackmail communications magnate Denis O’Brien, the Moriarty Tribunal heard yesterday.

Solicitor Christopher Vaughan told fellow lawyer Kate Macmillan during telephone conversations that he believed property dealer Kevin Phelan had “orchestrated the whole thing”. And he was also said to have informed his legal colleague that he looked upon Mr Phelan as “a total crook”.

Ms Macmillan, whose note about her exchanges with Mr Vaughan was headed “blackmail”, was a member of a firm of lawyers representing media tycoon Mr O’Brien.

The Moriarty payments-to-politicians investigation has been told of “damaging” assertions in a letter that Mr Lowry was involved with Mr O’Brien’s £8.5 million take-over of the struggling Doncaster Rovers Football Club in 1998.

Both the one-time Fine Gael political high-flier and the O’Brien family have consistently denied any Lowry links with the Doncaster project.

In earlier evidence, Mr O’Brien’s father, also named Denis, said the Lowry connection allegation had been made “as part of a process to soften me up for some reason” at a key point in negotiating the Doncaster Rovers sale.

Mr O’Brien Senior, who led the soccer club purchase on his son’s behalf, also made a formal complaint to police in London about what he said was an attempt by previous Doncaster owner Mark Weaver and his partner Ken Richardson to blackmail him over the alleged Lowry connection.

After seeing Mr Weaver, he noted that it was “more likely than not” that Mr Phelan had been behind the visit.

Mr Lowry has accepted that he handed £65,000 to Mr Phelan, but insisted the payments were made solely “for normal and proper business dealings”.

The tribunal, now into its 12th year, has closely probed any O’Brien- Lowry links as part of its probe of the 1996 award of the second mobile phone licence to Mr O’Brien’s ESAT company when Mr Lowry was communications minister.

Suggestions that Mr Lowry paid Mr Phelan in connection with a dispute settlement prompted a near-instant denial by the now-independent TD for Tipperary North.

In a statement before the end of yesterday’s hearing, Mr Lowry dismissed any link with a blackmail attempt as “absurd”. He said: “Monies paid to Kevin Phelan were legitimate fees and expenses”.