Top legal firms AL Goodbody and LK Shields faced serious questions from the Moriarty tribunal this week over key letters, writes COLM KEENA
THE ACTIONS of two leading law firms AL Goodbody and LK Shields came in for scrutiny at the Moriarty tribunal this week. In both cases the tribunal raised questions about the disclosure of information.
In the case of AL Goodbody – solicitors for one of the witnesses, Aidan Phelan – the issue related to three letters the firm recently disclosed to the tribunal.The letters date from 2002 and concern Phelan’s dealings with an Omagh-based businessman and land agent, Kevin Phelan.
One is a letter from Kevin Phelan’s English lawyers Woodcocks to AL Goodbody. The other two letters involve a second UK law firm, DLA Piper, acting for Aidan Phelan, and Woodcocks.
In an opening statement on Monday, John Coughlan SC, for the tribunal, said the third letter, dated March 2002 and from Woodcocks, contained a lengthy narrative by Kevin Phelan concerning three UK deals that was “wholly at variance” with the evidence that had been given to the tribunal by other witness over the past few years.
The nature of the narrative has not yet been revealed. And Coughlan has pointed out that the Phelan letter containing the contradictory narrative has to be treated with “caution”.
But he said that the tribunal had raised the issue as to why the three letters had not been disclosed to it by AL Goodbody in 2004 when the tribunal first sought disclosure of relevant documents.
Coughlan said that AL Goodbody had replied that Aidan Phelan believed the correspondence was “vexatious and not relevant in any way to the issues” concerning the tribunal. Coughlan said the letters were “undoubtedly relevant” and the tribunal had subsequently asked AL Goodbody to comment on the “omission” of the material from responses received on foot of tribunal inquiries back in November 2004.
He said AL Goodbody had told the tribunal that although it received a letter from Woodcocks, it it did not correspond directly with the British firm and, on its client’s instructions, “this correspondence was not considered relevant to the tribunals investigation”.
Coughlan told the tribunal that it had also asked AL Goodbody to identify the person within the firm who “considered and ultimately decided” that the material was not relevant to the tribunal. The letters read out by Coughlan this week did not answer that question.
The other law firm under scrutiny is LK Shields and the issue concerns the firm’s managing partner, Hugh Garvey. He acted over a number of years for Denis O’Brien snr and Westferry Ltd, an Isle of Man company used in the purchase of a Doncaster company that has a lease on a football stadium.
O’Brien snr had previously used another firm of solicitors, William Fry, but switched to LK Shields in 2003 after the tribunal wrote to William Fry, in January 2003, in the wake of a report in The Irish Times.
The report revealed an apparent link between former minister Michael Lowry and the Doncaster deal, and disclosed that a blackmail allegation had been made to the London police by Denis O’Brien snr in the context of mediation hearings in London in 2002 with the vendors of the Doncaster company.
In response to the tribunal’s inquiry, Kate McMillan, a solicitor with Peter Carter Ruck solicitors, London, acting for Westferry and O’Brien snr, met a London police officer. He told her the police had no serious concern about a draft police statement from O’Brien snr being given to the tribunal.
A letter to this effect was written to William Fry by Ruth Collard, McMillan’s colleague in the London firm.
O’Brien snr subsequently asked Collard to amend the letter, with the suggested amendments having the effect of removing any reference to the police not having any concerns. Collard complied and a new letter was sent.
Soon afterwards the O’Brien snr/Westferry matter was transferred from Fry to LK Shields, along with the related files.
On September 30th, 2003, Owen O’Sullivan, of Fry, faxed Garvey: “Hugh, I refer to my voicemail yesterday evening and enclose copies of two letters received from Ruth Collard of Peter Carter Ruck in case these are not among what you receive from Denis.”
He also included an e-mail to him from Collard that made clear that she had “slightly amended” the letter at O’Brien snr’s request.
In February 2004 Garvey wrote to the tribunal saying that Carter Ruck had concerns about the O’Brien police statement being given to the tribunal. He wrote about the “concern (which we understand is shared by the police)”.
The matter continued for more than a year and grew very complicated and the alleged concern of the police was repeated.
In time, however, the tribunal got a copy of a minute of the McMillan meeting, and discovered that the police never had any such concern.
Garvey was asked in the witness box this week how LK Shields could have written letters referring to police concerns when he was in possession of the two letters given to him by O’Sullivan.
Garvey said he did not look behind the letters, and relied on the second letter written by Collard, and his instructions from his clients. He might not have recalled the Fry letters when writing about the matter over the extended period of the correspondence, he said.
Garvey was also asked about evidence given in London by Collard, who said she had thought hard about the request from O’Brien but decided that the second letter would be of little use as Frys already had the first letter.
Garvey did not accept the logic of this. He said his letters to the tribunal, which referred to police concerns, had been shown to Collard, and she had never said his understanding of her position was incorrect. “I can’t understand that,” he said.
