On the evening of Friday, October 24th 1996, the then Minister for Transport, Energy and Communications, Michael Lowry, was driven to Blackrock, Co Dublin, to attend a function at Maxwell's motor dealers, a BMW specialist that had just been given an ISO award.
The Tipperary TD was at the height of his power. He was as often chairing meetings in Brussels as he was in Dublin. He was chairman of the Fine Gael trustees and a close associate of John Bruton. Commercial decisions of huge significance were being made by his department and since his rise he had become friendly with the State's most powerful business figures.
According to his own evidence to the Moriarty tribunal, Mr Lowry went to meet one of these powerful friends after his visit to Maxwell's. The two men were going to carry out a crucial step in a conspiracy to hide from the Revenue money held offshore by the senior government minister.
The minister was driven in his State car to the Monkstown home of the late David Austin. Mr Austin was a multi-millionaire, executive vice-president of the Jefferson Smurfit group, and a tax exile with homes in Dublin, London and the south of France. According to Mr Denis O'Brien, the multi-millionaire whose company, Esat Digifone, had received a hugely lucrative mobile phone licence from Mr Lowry's department in May 1996, Mr Austin had that summer sold a home in Spain to him for £150,000 (€190,000).
Mr Lowry called to Mr Austin's apartment to sign a document that the Smurfit executive had already prepared. It was a one-page note, written in precise language, setting out the terms for a £147,000 loan from Mr Austin to Mr Lowry. The money was to be repaid within five years, with interest to accumulate at commercial rates.
At the time, Mr Austin was suffering from cancer and according to a friend, Mr Michael O'Leary, would have been aware in October 1996 that he would not be seeing the new century.
A further curious aspect of the loan arrangement is that in October 1996, Mr Austin knew that Mr Lowry had been the subject of huge controversy because of the granting of the mobile phone licence to Esat Digifone. Disgruntled losing bidders were criticising the decision. Yet Mr Austin, when giving the loan to Mr Lowry, was creating a direct financial link between the minister and Denis O'Brien.
According to Mr Lowry, he was considering using undeclared money he had earned from Dunnes Stores and hidden in an offshore account in the Channel Islands to pay for the renovation of a house he had just bought on Carysfort Avenue in Blackrock. However, when discussing the matter with Mr Austin, according to Mr Lowry, the Smurfit executive had suggested that he, Mr Lowry, leave the Channel Islands money outside the jurisdiction and that he, Mr Austin, would loan him the funds required. The government minister agreed.
In July, Mr O'Brien had got his accountant, Mr Aidan Phelan, to withdraw £407,000 from an O'Brien company account in Dublin and place it in an account in the Isle of Man in Mr Phelan's name. (On its way to the Isle of Man, Mr Phelan had passed the money through the account of one of his companies.) A number of payments linked to the Esat Digifone licence competition were made from the Isle of Man account. Also, £150,000 was sent to Mr Austin. Mr O'Brien has said this was to pay for the house in Spain.
Mr Austin had this money in a new account he had opened in Jersey. He'd left the money there for a few months and was now giving most of it to Mr Lowry, thereby creating a direct financial link with Mr O'Brien. If the payment was in fact a loan, as said by Mr Lowry, and not a payment by Mr O'Brien to Mr Lowry, then Mr Austin was doing something innocent - but reckless.
Mr Austin was a close friend of Mr O'Brien and his family. He was also a close friend of Mr Lowry. According to Mr Lowry, Mr Austin never told him about the sale of the house in Spain to Mr O'Brien, or the link between the money being given to him and the hugely successful communications entrepreneur.
There was a further important matter in the background. In December 1995, soon after Esat Digifone had won the phone licence competition, Mr Austin was central to a surreptitious $50,000 (€55,700) payment from Esat Digifone/Telenor to Fine Gael. (Telenor was a 40 per cent partner in Digifone.)
John Bruton had refused to accept the payment because of the danger that it might be misconstrued as being linked to the licence award, and Mr Austin had decided to keep it in another account in Jersey, before passing it on as a personal donation to the party. According to Mr Lowry, who was a senior fundraiser for Fine Gael, he was told nothing about this matter at the time.
Mr Lowry opened an account in the Isle of Man and the £147,000 he got from Mr Austin was transferred to the account by way of a draft. By November 1996, some of the truth about Mr Lowry's relationship with Dunnes Stores was printed in the media. The minister, who had availed of the 1993 tax amnesty, resigned in disgrace. By February 1997, the McCracken (Dunnes Stores) Tribunal was being set up. Mr Lowry closed the Isle of Man account and sent the money back to David Austin. He also sold the Carysfort house.
Mr Austin died in November 1998, after the Moriarty tribunal had been established and without ever telling it about the controversial $50,000 donation or the "loan" to Mr Lowry. Mr Lowry, despite intense investigation into his affairs, did not tell the tribunal about the £147,000 transaction until earlier this year, and after the tribunal had discovered the $50,000 contribution.
The key matter now is whether the £147,000, which originated from accounts owned by Mr O'Brien, was in fact a payment to Mr Lowry.
The former minister has produced the handwritten note, signed by him and Mr Austin, and said this shows the transaction was a loan.
Tribunal counsel, Mr Jerry Healy SC, put it to Mr Lowry that the note could easily have been written after Mr Lowry's fall from grace, and to cover a transaction that had originally been intended as a payment; in other words, that Mr Austin and Mr Lowry colluded to produce "evidence" that could be used by the former minister, should the transaction ever be discovered.
Mr Lowry strongly rejected the suggestion that the note was back-dated and that the money trail originating with Mr O'Brien indicated a plan to give money to Mr Lowry. "You are attempting to weave a web of intrigue that simply does not exist," he said.
If the tribunal chairman, Mr Justice Moriarty, decides the transaction was a payment, then he might decide other transactions being inquired into, involving a further £720,000 sterling (€1.2 million), also constituted financial assistance to the former minister from Mr O'Brien.
If any of the transactions are found to be payments, then the question of motive arises. The tribunal, when it resumes, will investigate the granting of the licence to Esat Digifone, and whether there was any interference in the process.
The failed competitors for the licence are watching, and the possibility of lawsuits for tens if not hundreds of millions of pounds being taken against the Government hangs as a low menacing cloud over the proceedings.
