Bewildering cast of characters in Moriarty morass

A FOOTBALL club languishing in the Vauxhall Conference, monies provided with the purpose of securing various properties, and a bewildering array of characters — all wrapped up in a report where the only clear reckoning is the damage done to Michael Lowry’s reputation.

The former Transport Minister is beyond diminished as a result of the Moriarty Report’s damning findings, despite strong assertions from Denis O’Brien that he did not pay him “one red cent”.

While the billionaire went on the attack in the immediate aftermath of the publication of the report, Mr Lowry’s role in the numerous controversial deals has already caused embarrassment for Fine Gael, mainly down to his financial fumblings.

Chapter 14 in volume 1 of the report offers this damning indictment when referring to his company Garuda: “On the contrary, the almost invariable course of dealing appears that the payments were appropriated to Mr Lowry’s personal benefit, either by encashment or lodgement to Irish or off-shore bank accounts in his name. Most reprehensibly, of the sums intended to be dispensed among Garuda employees as Christmas bonus payments, these appear to have been personally appropriated in their entirety by Mr Lowry.”

The sum amounted to IR£34,500. That Scrooge-like act aside, the actions of the Independent TD are described as “disgraceful and insidious” in the context of awarding the mobile phone licence.

While the report bemoans the fact that in many instances regarding Mr Lowry, the money trail ends in knots, it also claims that the benefits accrued by the former Fine Gael Minister were often and plentiful.

Regarding the Carysfort property deal, it claims stg£147,000 which originated in Denis O’Brien’s account ended up, via conduits and off-shore accounts, in an Isle of Man account owned by Lowry, only for the cash to be switched back to Smurfit executive David Austin on the day of the establishment of the McCracken Tribunal, another body charged with looking at payments made to Lowry and others.

Denis O’Brien argues the opposite, but the report also finds that stg£300,000 originating with the ex-Esat boss worked its way from his Credit Suisse account to Lowry’s account regarding the Mansfield property deal.

While accepting that it was unable to pin down the exact nature of his role in the deal over the then-ailing Doncaster Rovers FC, the Tribunal concludes that Lowry was involved, and that a payment would have been in the offing. He received significant loans from businessmen Bill Maher and Pat Doherty, who as the report outlines, turned up in evidence at the “embryonic stage” of the Doncaster transaction.

The lack of proper documentation in many instances is shocking. Letters are falsified regarding the Cheadle and Mansfield deals so as to remove references to his involvement. Some witnesses refused to attend. The shelf company Catclause, initially involved in the Cheadle deal, are eased out of the picture in some documentation, while the fact that Lowry and his adult daughter were directors of Catclause is smudged by the fact that other people acted as trustees in the transaction.

Files regarding bank transactions also went missing in some instances, and to take the Cheadle deal, the amount of to-ing and fro-ing is such that it is almost impossible to follow exactly who was doing what, and when, a fact admitted by the report authors in exasperated tones.

Overall it declares that Mr Lowry received from Mr O’Brien one sum of stg£147,000, another of stg£300,000 and a benefit equivalent to a payment in the form of Mr O’Brien’s support for a loan of stg£420,000.

The report’s conclusions, that Mr Lowry engaged in a “venal abuse of office” and betrayed characteristics similar to former Taoiseach CJ Haughey, are set to ensure that any past achievements in politics are largely forgotten. Maybe he should have become more attached to Doncaster Rovers, who now compete in the second tier of English football.