Yesterday was a bad day for Mr Denis O'Brien at the Moriarty tribunal, and that is putting it mildly.
The entrepreneur was at the receiving end of some very aggressive questioning by Mr John Coughlan SC, for the tribunal, who asked why it was not until last Friday that the tribunal was told about an account in the Isle of Man.
During the course of this questioning, Mr Coughlan revealed some surprising facts concerning a house in Marbella, Spain, which now belongs to Mr O'Brien and which formerly belonged to his close friend, the late Mr David Austin.
Mr Coughlan made it clear he intends to examine the possibility that the £150,000 which Mr O'Brien says he paid to Mr Austin for this house was in fact a payment intended for Mr Lowry.
The money went from a temporary account Mr O'Brien had with the AIB in the Isle of Man in July 1996 to Jersey, where it was the opening lodgment, and only lodgment, that year to an account belonging to Mr Austin. In October Mr Austin transferred the bulk of the money to an account on the Isle of Man belonging to Mr Lowry. Again, it was an opening lodgment.
Mr Lowry says the money was intended as a loan and he returned it in February 1997, with interest. However, it is unclear whether he has supporting evidence to show the payment was a loan. By February 1997 Mr Lowry was in political disgrace.
Yesterday it emerged that Mr O'Brien's evidence to show when he bought the Marbella house is not straightforward.
He bought the house for his parents, according to a letter from his solicitors, William Fry, to the tribunal. The house is and was owned by a company in Gibraltar, Tokey Investments Ltd, and the sale was effected, Mr O'Brien's solicitors said, through the transfer of the shares in Tokey to an Isle of Man trust belonging to Mr O'Brien.
"No solicitors were retained by either side, the sale being effected by a simple transfer of the beneficial ownership of shares," the solicitors wrote.
Mr Austin was looking after the transfer of ownership in 1996, according to Mr O'Brien's solicitors. Completion of the transfer was not effected because documents were mislaid.
The trust company, Walbrook Trustees (IOM) Ltd, is a subsidiary of Deloitte & Touche. Declarations of trust in favour of Mr O'Brien were not executed until May 15th last, almost five years after the purported sale.
Asked in correspondence about this Mr O'Brien's solicitors wrote: "We understand that the declarations of trust are dated May 2001 because it was at that time that Walbrook established, in response to inquiries from our client, that they couldn't find executive declarations of trust from the relevant time.
"However, we understand that they were satisfied from their file that Denis O'Brien is the beneficial owner and therefore executed the declarations, copies of which were furnished to you."
As if this, from Mr O'Brien's perspective, is not bad enough, it is to be examined by Mr Coughlan in the context of a comment Mr O'Brien made in 1996, that he had made a payment to Mr Lowry in relation to the Esat Digifone licence; and a later comment that a payment was to have gone via an "intermediary" but had not gone ahead but got "stuck".
Mr O'Brien denies any payment was ever made. Yesterday he said the failure to tell a top-level Esat Telecom/Esat Digifone inquiry in 1997 about the Isle of Man account was "an oversight by somebody".
His accountant, Mr Aidan Phelan, set up the Isle of Man account and organised the payment to Mr Austin. He also oversaw another six payments to as yet unidentified payees from the same account. He was a close friend of Mr Austin and is an executor of his estate.
Mr Phelan never told the 1997 inquiry about the Isle of Man account, despite being asked about accounts linked to Mr O'Brien. At issue in the inquiry was a £100 million-plus public flotation. Esat directors were concerned they could be sued for millions if it subsequently emerged there was something dodgy about the Digifone licence.