Colm Keena, Public Affairs Correspondent, on some of the key developments in the Doncaster FC saga.
In January 2003 this newspaper contacted Denis O'Connor on his mobile phone about an article being prepared concerning Michael Lowry.
Mr O'Connor is an accountant and friend of Mr Lowry's who has for some years been helping the former Government minister in his dealings with the Moriarty tribunal and the Revenue Commissioners.
Mr O'Connor first helped Mr Lowry in relation to his refrigeration business and payments Mr Lowry received from Ben Dunne. Then, after the tribunal discovered Mr Lowry had been involved in property deals in Cheadle and Mansfield which may have involved the telecoms tycoon, Denis O'Brien, Mr O'Connor began to help him with that issue.
When contacted in January 2003, Mr O'Connor was told The Irish Timeshad seen a letter indicating that Mr Lowry might have had an involvement in another property deal, this time in Doncaster. Mr O'Connor said he had never seen a letter linking Mr Lowry to the deal. He said that if Mr Lowry had any involvement with the Doncaster deal, "then I throw my hat at it."
A lengthy opening statement read out this week by tribunal barrister Jerry Healy SC indicates that Mr O'Connor may not only have known about the letter in January 2003, but may have been involved with it and other matters relating to Doncaster for some time prior to that date.
"What is unclear, at this stage, is the precise capacity in which he was involved," Mr Healy said.
The deal
After Mr Lowry resigned from Government in late 1996 as a result of the Dunnes payments scandal, he was faced with financial difficulties. The Revenue was on his case, and a large settlement was likely. He began looking at ways, in addition to his refrigeration business, to make money.
By December 1998 he was paying a stg £25,000 deposit on a property in Mansfield, England, which he hoped would make him money.
When the time came to close the deal, he found himself in difficulty until rescued by Aidan Phelan, an accountant and adviser to Denis O'Brien.
Phelan sourced stg£230,000 from a bank account in London belonging to O'Brien, and closed the deal. Phelan has said he was owed the money by O'Brien and O'Brien has agreed, adding that he knew nothing about the deal with Lowry.
A year later Phelan and Lowry were involved in a second deal, in Cheadle, involving in excess of stg£400,000. The bulk of the money came from a bank, GE Capital Woodchester, which it seems took comfort from a belief that O'Brien was somewhere in the background.
Both these properties were brought to the purchasers' attention by Kevin Phelan, a Northern Ireland businessman who is not related to Aidan Phelan. An English solicitor, Christopher Vaughan, acted for the purchasers in both deals. The same personnel, Vaughan, Kevin Phelan and Aidan Phelan, were involved in an August 1998 transaction involving Doncaster Rovers.
The deal involved the purchase, by an Isle of Man company called Westferry, of the shares in a company called Doncaster Rovers Football Club Ltd (DRFC). The price was stg£4.3 million.
The idea was that the Doncaster team would be moved to a new stadium, and the old stadium, in central Doncaster, would be redeveloped as a retail centre. The tribunal has been told that Aidan Phelan fronted the deal on behalf of O'Brien, and that Lowry had no involvement whatsoever.
The vendors were Ken Richardson (who had served time in jail for seeking to have the stadium burned down), and Mark Weaver. As part of the deal some of the purchase price was retained, until a number of aspects of the deal were resolved. This in time would cause great difficulties.
Lowry
The Irish Timesreport on the letter linking Mr Lowry to Doncaster was duly published in January 2003. It said that a September 1998 letter from Vaughan to Lowry stated that Vaughan had not up to then understood Lowry's "total involvement" in the Doncaster deal.
The tribunal decided to investigate in private. When contacted by the tribunal, Vaughan confirmed he had written the letter, but said he had soon afterwards learned that he was mistaken, and that he no longer believed Lowry was linked to the Doncaster deal. He said he would not come to Dublin to give evidence.
The newspaper report explained that the vendors of DRFC had fallen out with the purchasers over the issue of the retained funds, and that the matter had gone to mediation. During the mediation, the letter from Vaughan had been produced by the vendors, and shown to O'Brien's father, Denis O'Brien snr, who was acting for Westferry.
The mediation was successful but afterwards O'Brien snr filed a complaint to the London police, alleging blackmail.
The tribunal, in its private inquiries, began to investigate this and was in time given a copy of an attendance note taken by a London solicitor, Ruth Collard, in September 2002. Collard is a partner in a top London firm, Peter Carter Ruck, that was acting for Westferry.
The attendance note covered a two-hour meeting she had to discuss the matter with O'Connor and it seems Collard was authorised to meet O'Connor by John Ryall, a man who works for O'Brien jnr in Dublin.
In the note O'Connor is recorded as explaining that he had been asked by O'Brien snr, who by then had taken over the Westferry project, to help sort out a dispute with Kevin Phelan.
When discussing the matter with O'Brien snr, O'Connor had been told about the mediation involving Richardson and Weaver. This had led to the London meeting.
O'Connor was recorded as expressing the view that the Doncaster vendors, Richardson and Weaver, were out to cause maximum embarrassment to O'Brien and to Lowry. Collard asked how they could cause embarrassment to Lowry, who was not involved in the proceedings.
The note continued: "Denis O'Connor said that Michael Lowry did have a connection and that he had been in the room when discussions had taken place between Kevin Phelan and Ken Richardson regarding the lease. Ruth Collard said no one had ever suggested that to her previously."
When he was asked about this reference by the tribunal, O'Connor said Collard was wholly mistaken in suggesting that he had implicated Lowry in the Doncaster transaction. Both Collard and O'Connor are expected to give evidence on the matter. O'Connor has said he never told Lowry about his, O'Connor's, work on the Westferry issue.
Mr Healy has said that in his complaint to the London police in 2002, O'Brien snr said that in the week prior to the mediation he was faxed a copy of the Vaughan letter.
O'Brien also said that he had received a message from Richardson/Weaver, by way of O'Connor, advising him that a copy of the Vaughan letter was in their possession.
When informed of this, O'Connor told the tribunal it was not true. He also said a fax from Weaver had been received in his office one day but he had told his receptionist to forward it to O'Brien snr and he, O'Connor, had never looked at it.
Court challenges
The tribunal initiated public hearings into this material in 2004 but the hearings were stopped because of an unsuccessful appeal to the High Court, and then the Supreme Court, by O'Brien. When the hearings resumed this week, Mr Healy explained that the legal actions had led to more information coming to the attention of the tribunal.
One item was a fax dated August 1999, from Kevin Phelan to Aidan Phelan. The fax is headed "Doncaster Project", though not all the items listed in the fax concerned Doncaster. That said item seven read: "ML. Kevin Phelan to refer all queries regarding Doncaster to Aidan Phelan."
A letter a year later from Kevin Phelan to Aidan Phelan, was headed "re Doncaster, Altrincham/Luton projects". The latter two projects are not relevant to the tribunal's inquiries. The first paragraph of the letter read: "Further to our discussion with Christopher Vaughan and Michael Lowry following your 17th August 2000 meeting, we..."
Mr Healy, having read out the letter this week, said the discussions referred to, involving Vaughan and Lowry, appeared to be in relation to Doncaster.
The letter indicates that relations between the two Phelans had deteriorated, and that control of the project had shifted from Kevin Phelan to Aidan Phelan. Kevin Phelan was seeking his fees and costs. By 2002, matters had deteriorated to such an extent that Kevin Phelan wrote to the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland complaining about Aidan Phelan and his brother, another accountant, Bryan Phelan.
"We have . . . had instructions from the firm (Bryan Phelan & Co) through Aidan Phelan who confirmed that he was acting as agent for Mr Denis O'Brien and another in respect of four projects, Mansfield site, Handforth site, Altrincham Football Club, and Doncaster Rovers Football Club." Handforth is a reference to the Cheadle deal.
Kevin Phelan complained in the letter that he had not been paid his agreed fees, and stated his belief that the failure to pay the money was directly related to "our correspondence with Mr Aidan Phelan regarding his evidence to the Moriarty tribunal and the fact that we have questioned the accuracy of his evidence".
Given Mr Lowry's involvement in the Cheadle and Mansfield transactions, Healy said it was a reasonable interpretation of the letter that Kevin Phelan was referring to Aidan Phelan acting as agent for Denis O'Brien and Michael Lowry, in relation to all the properties mentioned. Such an interpretation would conflict with all of the evidence that has been heard to date on these matters.
The letter is of obvious importance to the tribunal's inquiry, though Healy pointed out that it was written in the context of a dispute, and that Kevin Phelan has not agreed to come forward to give evidence.
The complaint was subsequently formally withdrawn by Kevin Phelan, who in time received a payment from Westferry.
Other documents received by the tribunal in the period after the High Court challenge, include further letters from Vaughan, including correspondence with a Peter Vanderpump working in the Isle of Man for Westferry.
In August 2002, Vanderpump wrote to Vaughan in relation to the suggestion that had been made in the course of the mediation with Richardson and Weaver, to the effect that Lowry had an involvement in the Doncaster deal. This was before the mediation had been resolved and before O'Connor's meeting in London with Collard.
Vanderpump wrote stating that Westferry was owned by Walbrook Trustees (Isle of Man), as trustees for the Wellington Trust, the beneficiaries of which were Denis O'Brien and his family. "We would be grateful if you will confirm in writing that this is also your full and complete understanding of the matter."
Vaughan prepared two letters in response, only one of which he sent. The letters were dated October 21st and 23rd 2002. Healy said that in correspondence with the tribunal, Vaughan has not "resiled" from the content of the earlier, unsent letter. "In fact, the two letters do not contradict one another, but rather contain two different sets of information concerning Mr Vaughan's knowledge of the Doncaster project."
The letter that was sent contains a note on the top reading: "Please send a copy to John Ryall as soon as possible."
Vaughan said in his letter that his files in relation to Doncaster were with Peter Carter Ruck in London, and that he was working from memory. Nevertheless, he was "quite convinced that, during the course of the acquisition of DRFC by Westferry, Kevin Phelan maintained to me that he was the beneficial owner of a trust called 'Glebe Trust', and also that he had a beneficial interest in Westferry. I am also sure that he made representations to me to the effect that Michael Lowry was also involved in Glebe Trust".
Healy explained that Westferry was originally set up by Kevin Phelan and had been owned by Glebe Trust. The shares were subsequently transferred to the Wellington Trust.
Vaughan, in his letter to Vanderpump, said that at no time during the acquisition of DRFC did Lowry have an input into the process.
In the unsent letter dated two days earlier, Vaughan wrote that he could state "categorically that before I met Michael Lowry for the first time on September 24th (1998) I had absolutely no knowledge that he might have been involved in the acquisition of DRFC". It was this September 1998 meeting that led to the letter from Vaughan to Lowry that would be eventually shown to The Irish Times.
Vaughan said he believed at that time that Lowry might have some influence. "I do not think that I misunderstood his comments to me that he was involved in DRFC, but, in hindsight, I must put it down to some sort of political ego that he was trying to attach his name to what appeared to be a successful venture.
"I would, however, reiterate, so far as I was aware, throughout the whole of the negotiations with the DRFC acquisition, Michael Lowry was never ever involved in giving me any instructions."
The letter seems to indicate that Vaughan came to write the letter to Lowry, saying he had not understood up to then Lowry's "total involvement" in the Doncaster deal, because of what Lowry himself had said to Vaughan.
Healy, in his lengthy opening statement, said: "And we know from other documentation, to which I won't refer in detail, that he has reiterated that position, saying that the impression he formed in 1998 was based on what he was then told, and his subsequent view that Mr Lowry was not involved was based on subsequent instructions from his clients."
A further document from Vaughan was referred to by Healy. This one was part of a draft statement prepared by Vaughan for Carter-Ruck, in connection with the blackmail complaint that was made to the London police.
Vaughan referred to a visit to his office by Weaver, one of the DRFC vendors, in October 2002 during which Weaver showed Vaughan a copy of the 1998 letter from Vaughan to Lowry. Vaughan made a copy of the letter before Weaver left.
"Twenty minutes after Mark Weaver left, I received a telephone call from Denis O'Connor, Michael Lowry's accountant, who mentioned that there was 'a letter floating about' which had been produced outside the mediation hearing last month."
Five days later O'Connor came to see Vaughan and Vaughan gave him the photocopy of the letter to Lowry, according to Vaughan's draft statement to the police.
Healy observed: "If what is contained in Mr Vaughan's draft statement is correct, and the annotations on that last paragraph ... seem to suggest that he has no difficulty with the content of the paragraph, it would seem to follow that Mr Denis O'Connor must have had a copy of Mr Vaughan's letter of the 25th September, 1998, at the very latest by the 23rd October, 2002, which would be some considerable time in advance of the statements he made at the time of the publication of The Irish Timesarticle at the beginning of January 2003."
A number of witnesses will be heard on these issues over the coming weeks and a report is expected by the end of the year.
