Danish consultant to give evidence at Moriarty tribunal

A DANISH consultant, who had previously declined to appear as a witness, is set to give key evidence to the Moriarty Tribunal today.

Telecommunications expert Michael Andersen is expected to tell the inquiry, which resumes hearings at Dublin Castle this morning, that the competition for the state’s second mobile phone licence was fairly won by the Esat consortium owned by businessman Denis O’Brien.

As a consultant hired by the Government who was centrally involved in designing the competition in 1995, Mr Andersen is also likely to claim that he was unaware of the then Minister for Communications, Michael Lowry, having any role in the decision to award the licence to Esat.

Earlier this year, Mr Andersen accused the tribunal’s legal team of bias and of deliberately seeking to undermine the decision to award the licence to Esat.

He also claimed provisional findings by the inquiry’s chairman, Mr Justice Michael Moriarty, contained “a number of very significant errors,” despite the fact he had already highlighted such factual mistakes repeatedly to the tribunal in private meetings back at the start of the decade.

In a statement provided to the Tribunal last April, Mr Andersen said the inquiry’s senior counsel appeared to believe that the second- placed consortium, Persona, were the best candidates to win the licence and they seemed to hold “a strong view” that Esat did not deserve to win the competition.

Mr Andersen said the legal team, headed by barristers, John Coughlan and Jerry Healy, were operating under “a pro-Persona and anti-Esat agenda”.

Several parties have repeatedly criticised the fact that Mr Healy had previously provided legal advice to Persona before working for the Tribunal.

Mr Andersen’s decision to travel to Dublin to give evidence is largely as a result of contact with lawyers acting for Mr O’Brien as the Danish consultant had previously declined to give evidence because he had not been granted indemnity by the State. Mr O’Brien has confirmed he has indemnified Mr Andersen for any costs arising out of his appearance at Dublin Castle.

However, Mr Andersen’s statement which has been circulated by the Tribunal to other parties in recent weeks, had been redacted to exclude any criticism of the inquiry itself.

The omission of such comments is expected to be raised by Mr O’Brien’s legal team at the start of today’s hearing.

It is expected that Mr Andersen’s evidence to the Tribunal could last at least three weeks.

The Moriarty Tribunal was established in 1997 to inquire into payments to former Taoiseach, Charles Haughey and Mr Lowry from wealthy businessmen and if they had done any political favours in return.

Since the publication of its report on Mr Haughey in December 2006, the inquiry has focused on examining the awarding of the mobile phone licence to Esat and if there was any business link between Mr Lowry and Mr O’Brien which would have conferred financial benefit on the Tipperary North TD.

The Tribunal itself has suffered a number of setbacks over the past few years and has faced mounting criticism over its conduct, delays and costs.

In May, Mr Justice Moriarty was forced to withdraw provisional findings made about the shareholding of controversial financier, Dermot Desmond, in Esat.

It followed another setback just weeks earlier when the Tribunal chairman admitted he had made “two significant errors” relating to legal advice concerning the composition of various stakeholdings in Esat.