Tribunal sitting: The tribunal has found six instances where Michael Lowry is mentioned in relation to a £4.3 million sterling property deal in which he says he has no involvement.
In a lengthy opening statement on the latest public session of the tribunal, Jerry Healy SC, for the tribunal, gave details of matters that are to be examined in public evidence over the coming two weeks.
Denis O'Brien has said the Doncaster transaction was exclusively his and Mr Lowry has said he had no involvement.
Mr Healy said the tribunal's inquiries in private into the matter were initiated following a report in The Irish Times in January 2003.
That report quoted a letter to Mr Lowry from English solicitor Christopher Vaughan in which Mr Vaughan said he had not up to then understood Mr Lowry's "total involvement" in the Doncaster deal.
Mr Vaughan has since said he wrote the letter while under a misapprehension.
Mr Lowry has said he has never seen the letter.
He has refused earlier requests to give evidence, but Mr Healy said Mr Vaughan was now "minded" to do so.
Another English solicitor, Ruth Collard, a partner with Carter Ruck solicitors, is also to give evidence, Mr Healy said.
In a note of a 2002 meeting with Mr Lowry's accountant, Denis O'Connor, Ms Collard noted Mr O'Connor as saying that Mr Lowry did have a connection with the Doncaster deal. Mr O'Connor has told the tribunal that Ms Collard was "wholly mistaken" in her note.
Mr Healy also referred to a 1999 fax from Northern Ireland businessman Kevin Phelan, who spotted the Doncaster deal, to Aidan Phelan (no relation), a Dublin accountant who worked for Mr O'Brien. The fax was headed "Doncaster project" and included the line: "ML. KP to refer all queries regarding Doncaster to AP."
He also read out the contents of a letter of a year later from Kevin Phelan to Aidan Phelan which, Mr Healy said, seemed to refer to discussions with Mr Lowry and Mr Vaughan in relation to Doncaster.
Mr Healy also read out a letter of complaint from Kevin Phelan to the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland in which he complained about not receiving fees he said were due to him for work done for Aidan Phelan.
In the letter, he said Aidan Phelan had confirmed he was acting for "Denis O'Brien and another" in relation to four English property deals, including Doncaster. Mr Healy said one reasonable interpretation was that the letter was referring to Mr O'Brien and Mr Lowry. The complaint was subsequently withdrawn.
Mr Healy also read out another letter from Mr Vaughan, dated October 2002, in which Mr Vaughan said he had been told by Kevin Phelan that Mr Lowry was involved with an Isle of Man trust, the Glebe Trust, which at one stage owned Westferry, the Isle of Man company that bought the Doncaster property.
