Tribunal accused of bias by expert witness

THE Moriarty Tribunal’s legal team have been accused of bias by a Danish telecommunications expert who was centrally involved in designing the competition for the state’s second mobile phone licence.

Michael Andersen, who acted as a consultant to the Government in the licence competition which was won by Esat in 1996 has accused the tribunal’s lawyers of deliberately seeking to undermine the decision to award the licence to the company owned by businessman, Denis O’Brien.

He also claims provisional findings made by tribunal chairman, Mr Justice Michael Moriarty, contain “a number of very significant errors”, despite the fact that he had highlighted such factual mistakes repeatedly to the tribunal in the past.