The former solicitor to Mr Denis O'Brien's Communicorp group denied that a letter he drafted concerning Mr Dermot Desmond's involvement in Esat Digifone involved "spin and inaccuracy".
Mr Owen O'Connell, a managing partner with William Fry solicitors, said he believed there was a difference between presenting a client's case in the best possible light, and spin.
He rejected the contention of Mr John Coughlan SC, for the tribunal, that there was spin or inaccuracy in the letter, which it was intended would be send to the Department of Transport, Energy and Communications days before the issuing of a mobile phone licence to Esat Digifone in May 1996.
Mr Coughlan was asking Mr O'Connell about a section of the letter that dealt with the shareholding in Esat Digifone to be held for Mr Desmond by way of his company IIU Ltd. The original bid to the Department for the licence had not mentioned IIU or Mr Desmond.
When it was put to Mr O'Connell that the paragraph involved spin or inaccuracy, he said he accepted that it was a presentation of the facts "in a particular way" but he said there was no inaccuracy.
He said IIU had "taken" 25 per cent of Digifone as the price for its involvement in the consortium but the Department, before issuing the licence, had wanted Mr O'Brien's Esat Telecom to have 40 per cent of the consortium and Telenor to have another 40 per cent, as stated in the bid, leaving just 20 per cent for IIU.
It was decided by Digifone that the extra 5 per cent held by IIU could be presented as a "pre-placement" of some of the 12 per cent of the consortium the bid document had said would be placed subsequent to the licence being issued. Mr O'Connell said he felt this was legally valid. He always believed that IIU intended to sell on its shareholding.
The section of the letter concerning IIU Ltd was removed from the Esat Digifone letter before it was sent to the Department. Mr O'Connell said he could not remember why the section of the letter was deleted.
He said that based on the files he believed it was removed at the suggestion of either the Department or the company. It may have been his idea to have the section removed, he said, as negotiations with IIU Ltd were still live at the time and no one wanted to put anything in writing until the talks came to an end.
He said it was also possible that the Department sought the excision. The Department was in the habit of making requests without explaining the reason for them. "We were very much anxious to get the licence and we were really only asking how high when requested to jump."
Mr O'Connell said he was concerned about press coverage of an aspect of an opening statement made by Mr Coughlan late last year. This involved reference to some matters concerning the licence competition mentioned in a 1995 letter Mr O'Connell wrote to a London solicitor. Mr O'Connell felt there were "inferences of impropriety" in the media reports of the matter.
He had conducted further inquiry and found press cuttings from the time which contained the information it had been said was confidential or from which that information could be inferred.
He said there were other possible sources for the information. He said he would have written the letter on instruction from his client and the information contained in it would have come from his client.
Mr O'Connell is to resume giving evidence next Tuesday.
