Tribunal told of attempts to ‘wholly mislead’

LAWYERS for the Moriarty tribunal have claimed that attempts were made to “wholly mislead” the inquiry about the role of former Fine Gael minister Michael Lowry in a number of property deals in Britain which have links to millionaire businessman, Denis O’Brien.

The tribunal heard evidence yesterday that the Tipperary North TD was promised a share of the profits by another businessman, Kevin Phelan, who had arranged the purchase by Mr O’Brien of Doncaster Rovers football club in 1998. Both Mr Lowry and Mr O’Brien have repeatedly denied that the politician had any role in the deal.

Tribunal barrister John Coughlan SC said yesterday that documents in a file of a solicitor who had acted in the various land deals were either removed or altered to conceal the true nature of Mr Lowry’s role in them.

The tribunal is examining the background to the awarding of the lucrative second mobile phone licence to Mr O’Brien’s Esat consortium in 1996 and if there was any undue political interference in the competition process by Mr Lowry.

It is also investigating whether there was any business links between the two men which would have conferred financial benefits on the politician.

Mr Coughlan said yesterday that new documents which had recently come into the tribunal’s possession about property transactions in Mansfield, Cheadle and Doncaster were “at total variance” with the evidence which several witnesses involved in such land deals had already given at Dublin Castle.

Mr Coughlan said documents containing 170 pages of material which were clearly relevant to the inquiry had never been disclosed to the tribunal by any of the parties until last Wednesday. One letter written by Kevin Phelan said Mr Lowry was going to share in his 40% stake in any profit from the Doncaster deal.

Mr Coughlan pointed out that two different versions of some documents were in existence — of which the “short form” version omitted any reference to Mr Lowry’s role in the various property deals had previously been given to the tribunal’s legal team.

The new documents were contained in a file held by Northampton-based solicitor Christopher Vaughan, who had acted in the three property deals.