‘I never put that through my books or my account’

THE significance of the newly published taped conversation involving Michael Lowry is that, in it, he flatly contradicts evidence he supplied to the Moriarty Tribunal.

The conversation happened more than two years ago, before Mr Lowry took the witness box to explain his interest in English properties and to deny he had a stake in Denis O’Brien’s Doncaster Rovers development plan.

In this testimony, in Mar 2007, Mr Lowry, the former communications minister, publicly explained why he wanted to pay off a Northern Ireland-based property scout.