Prosecutors served a book of evidence yesterday on the managing director of one of Ireland's largest property companies, who is charged with insider trading.

Dunloe Ewart's Mr Philip Byrne (44), of Trafalgar Terrace, Monkstown, Co Dublin, was before the District Court on two charges of contravening the 1990 Companies Act relating to insider dealing. He was remanded on continuing bail to May 23rd. It is alleged that in 1997 he sold 260,000 shares in Dunloe House (now Dunloe Ewart) while having information in his capacity as a director of Aviette Ltd, a company associated with Dunloe.

It is claimed in the charges that this information was not generally available but might reasonably have been expected to be available to him, being a person connected with Dunloe by virtue of the relationship between Aviette and Dunloe.

This information, if available, would have been likely to materially affect the price of those shares because discussions had taken place designed to result in the merging of Aviette with another property company, Monarch, leading to the formation of a new entity known as the Cradder Group.

Cradder, it is further alleged, was then to be taken over by Dunloe.

To fund this, Dunloe was being advised to consider a rights issue at a price per share that represented a significant discount.