What was contemplated and attempted on the part of Mr Lowry and Mr Dunne was profoundly corrupt, to a degree that was nothing short of breathtaking
BUSINESSMAN Denis O’Brien made payments of Ir£147,000 and stg£300,000 to former minister Michael Lowry in the 1990s, the Moriarty tribunal has found.
In the first volume of its report, published yesterday, the tribunal also says Mr Lowry received a benefit equivalent to a payment in the form of Mr O’Brien’s support for a loan of stg£420,000 in December 1999.
It finds that these direct and indirect payments to the former minister give rise to “reasonable inference” that they were connected with the public office which he had previously held.
The tribunal concludes that much of the funding provided by Mr O’Brien as well as the proceeds of the loan had been used to purchase property in Mansfield and Cheadle in England.
It states that had the sale of these properties gone ahead it would have generated about stg£1.36 million.
“It should be observed, that, at the time of the making of these payments, the annual Dáil and/or ministerial salary entitlement, enjoyed by Mr Lowry, on any appraisal pale in comparison with their amounts”, the report states.
The tribunal says it is satisfied that Mr Lowry received a payment of Ir£147,000 from Mr O’Brien in July 1996, stg£300,000 in March 1999 and a benefit equivalent to a payment in the form of the businessman’s support for a loan of stg£420,000 in December 1999.
It says the evidence is that there was a carefully-planned and covert payment of Ir£147,000 by Mr O’Brien to an account owned by Mr Lowry in the Isle of Man. It says Mr O’Brien’s money was passed through two accounts held by his financial adviser Aidan Phelan in the Isle of Man to a Channel Islands account owned by the late David Austin, a mutual friend of Mr O’Brien and Mr Lowry. It says subsequently a payment of Ir£147,000 was transmitted from Mr Austins account to Mr Lowry’s account in the Isle of Man.
The tribunal says that this money was “hastily repaid (by Mr Lowry to Mr Austin in February 1997) out of fear of possible disclosure at the time that the McCracken tribunal (into payments to some politicians) was established”. It rejects the suggestion that there were two separate transactions. In this scenario the money paid by Mr O’Brien, via accounts held by his financial adviser, to Mr Austin was for the purchase of a holiday home in Spain while the other was “a friendly loan arrangement” between Mr Austin and Mr Lowry for the refurbishment of a property in Blackrock, Co Dublin. It says this suggestion represents “a belated attempt retrospectively to clothe those transactions with some commercial reality, in circumstances prompted by a realisation that at some point they might be uncovered”.
The report says that from the stg£300,000 payment, stg£231,000 was used to complete the purchase of the property in Mansfield while stg£44 ,500 was paid for the deposit on the Cheadle transaction – the balance coming from the loan.
It says that the form in which the stg£300,000 was made – through the agency of Mr Phelan directly to a solicitor’s account held outside the State – “was motivated by a desire to conceal the fact that Mr O’Brien was the true source of the payment to Mr Lowry”.
The tribunal maintains that in relation to its money trail investigations “no conclusion can be arrived at, other than that repeated and clandestine courses of actions were adopted by persons intimately associated with Mr O’Brien, to confer payments or other benefits upon Mr Lowry, on behalf of Mr O’Brien”.
The tribunal found that the files of an English solicitor, Christopher Vaughan, in connection with the Mansfield and Cheadle transactions had been falsified. It says that this was done with the full knowledge of a number of individuals including Mr Lowry and Mr Vaughan with the intention of concealing references to the former minister in relation to these property purchases.
It says that the falsification of the documents was carried out to ensure that “the contents of Mr Vaughan’s files could be presented in a form which appeared to be consistent with a false account of Mr Michael Lowry’s involvement, which it was intended would be and was, conveyed to the tribunal”.
“This was motivated by a desire to obscure from the tribunal a clear financial connection between Mr Denis O’Brien and Mr Michael Lowry and the payments by the former to the latter”.
The first volume of the tribunal report effectively follows a “money trail” linking what it concludes are payments, direct and indirect, between the businessman and the former minister.
The report, however, is also scathing of Mr Lowry over attempts in 1995 when he was minister for transport, energy and communications to influence the level of rent payable for Marlborough House, a property in Marlborough Street, Dublin, which had been bought by businessman Ben Dunne.
The tenant in the property at the time was the then Telecom Éireann of which the minister was the ultimate shareholder.
It says that not only were Mr Lowry’s actions “patently improper” and a grave dereliction of duty but that what he and Mr Dunne attempted to do was “profoundly corrupt”.
“As Minister entrusted with telecommunications matters, Mr Lowry in effect stood in the shoes of Telecom Éireann, as tenant of Marlborough House, and for him to have sought to procure unwarranted rent increases, that would have improperly enriched Mr Dunne over a seven-year period, and thereby burdened public funds within his ministerial remit, amounts to a grave conflict of duty and interest.
“Indeed, what was contemplated and attempted on the part of Mr Lowry and Mr Dunne was profoundly corrupt, to a degree that was nothing short of breathtaking.”
The tribunal report also criticises a $50,000 political donation made immediately after the awarding of the controversial mobile phone licence in 1995 by the Norwegian telecom company, Telenor, to Fine Gael. It says that this payment was made on behalf of Esat Digifone at the instigation of Mr O’Brien.
It says that while there was no evidence that Mr Lowry, who was then a trustee of Fine Gael, personally benefited from the donation, the manner in which it was made was “secretive, utterly lacking in transparency and designed to conceal the fact of such payment by or on behalf of the donors”.
