In March of this year Denis O'Brien got some bad news while on a skiing holiday in the French Alps.

According to Michael Tunney, who was on holiday with the same party or in the same location as O'Brien, O'Brien was furious when he, Tunney, informed him that Investec Bank, formerly GE Capital Woodchester, was going to approach the Moriarty Tribunal about a £420,000 sterling loan it had advanced to Aidan Phelan and that it now feared had connections with both Michael Lowry and Denis O'Brien.

Tunney told the tribunal he formed the impression that O'Brien had known nothing of the matter until told by him.

Around the same time as this was happening the tribunal was discovering, following media reports, that Telenor/Esat Digifone had made a $50,000 donation to Fine Gael in December 1995, just months after Digifone was declared the winner of the mobile phone licence competition.

Just when it had seemed that the tribunal was winding down, and that Lowry was in the clear, a whole new can of worms was being opened.

When the tribunal informed Lowry it had been told about the Cheadle loan, Lowry told the bank about his Isle of Man account, and the money he'd received from David Austin. He said the money was intended as a loan, and was to have been used to refurbish his house on Carysfort Avenue. However, after his political demise he'd returned the house to the builder he'd bought it from, at no financial loss, and had returned the "loan" to Austin.

The money had been returned on February 7th, 1997, the day the McCracken tribunal was established.

When the Cheadle transaction was raised with Aidan Phelan - who'd made a joint approach to the tribunal along with Investec Bank - he told the tribunal about the Mansfield transaction.

The tribunal was trying to get to grips with all these matters when it discovered that in 1997 the boards of Esat Digifone and Esat Telecom had conducted a top level inquiry into a comment by O'Brien himself that he'd given money to Michael Lowry.

Everyone settled down for what was obviously going to be a long and exhaustive investigation. A lot of evidence has already been heard and more is to come in the autumn. As matters stand the key issue is similar to the one identified by the Esat Telecom and Digifone directors in October/November 1997: what third party or documentary evidence is there to support the allegation or suspicion being investigated?

Mr John Coughlan SC, for the tribunal, during his questioning of Aidan Phelan last month, outlined what might be called the case for the prosecution. It is this: that O'Brien wanted to give money to Lowry, but the first payment, £150,000 in the summer of 1996, got "stuck"; and that Lowry still needed money and so Phelan, on O'Brien's behalf, supported Lowry in the Cheadle and Mansfield property deals.

The latter two deals involved support of approximately £1 million. Phelan told Coughlan he did not agree with this scenario.

No legal documentation was created in the summer of 1996 to prove the transfer of the Marbella house from Austin to O'Brien. The house is owned by a Gibraltar-based company and the shares in the company were transferred to an Isle of Man trust some years after the £150,000 transaction. The only document dated from the time is a file note created by a Gibraltar-based company secretarial services official, a Mr Perera, recording a call from Austin during which he said he was ill and considering selling his Spanish home.

Michael Lowry has produced a one-page document in David Austin's handwriting, dated October 1996 and signed by Austin and Lowry. The document states that a loan of £147,000 has been given to Lowry by Austin, and that a certain interest rate will apply. It also states that the loan should be repaid by October 2001, or when the Carysfort Avenue house is sold, whichever is the earliest.

Michael O'Leary, one of the executors to Austin's estate, has said Austin would have been well aware in October 1996 that he was very unlikely to still be alive in October 2001.

Austin died in early November 1998, without bringing any of the matters he was involved in concerning Denis O'Brien and Michael Lowry to the attention of the Moriarty Tribunal. The executors of his estate have said there was no reference to the Lowry loan in any of his papers. O'Leary has agreed that as the loan was repaid in February 1997, it was of no interest to the executors in terms of their duties.

Lowry's accountant, Denis O'Connor, has said he was never told anything about the loan, the account with Irish Nationwide in the Isle of Man, or the handwritten document recently produced by Lowry. (O'Connor, who is Lowry's tax agent, has also said he was never told about the two UK property transactions.)

The net point it seems is that the documentary evidence that is available does not prove that the £150,000 sent from a specially opened Isle of Man account in the summer of 1996 to a specially opened Jersey account, and from there to a specially opened Lowry account, travelled for the reasons now being given by O'Brien and Lowry. (O'Brien has said he knew nothing of the Austin/ Lowry transfer.)

In such a case it seems it will come down to the tribunal chairman, Mr Justice Moriarty, making a judgment call. Lowry's credibility as a witness is of course very damaged. The bottom line may be whether or not the judge decides to believe Denis O'Brien and Aidan Phelan. It is an unenviable position for the star entrepreneur of the boomtime 1990s to find himself in.

If O'Brien was giving support to Lowry, then the evidence to date would indicate a failed attempt to pass money to the then minister in late 1996, followed by the 1998/99 Mansfield and Cheadle transactions. The tribunal is investigating lodgements to David Austin's account with a New York stockbroking firm, Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette, in 1998.

O'Brien has told the tribunal he promised to get Esat Telecom shares at the time of the IPO for Austin, but forgot. Afterwards he didn't tell his sick friend he'd forgotten but instead threw in an extra $50,000 when, in February 1998, Austin sent his $100,000 to New York to pay for the promised but unpurchased stock. The $50,000 was to make up the difference between the IPO price and the price at the time the shares were bought in the market.

Then, in September 1998, Aidan Phelan was told by O'Brien to send $295,250 to the stockbroking firm for Austin's account. The money was used to buy Esat Telecom shares. Austin died soon afterwards, in early November, and some time after that the shares bought with the $295,250 were transferred to the account of a Noel Walsh. This occurred without any instruction for the transfer being issued by Austin's executors.

How the transfer occurred or why is not known. Phelan is another of the executors to Austin's estate and has indicated the New York firm may believe "there was an error in how these shares ended up in the Austin account". A few final points deserve mention. According to Phelan, when Lowry couldn't get a guarantor for the Cheadle loan after John Daly dropped out, he, Phelan, took over the whole deal. That was in January 2000.

The property was bought in December 1999. Vaughan, the solicitor - who has said he will not be giving evidence to the tribunal - did not buy the property in the name of Catclause Ltd. He bought it in his own name and held it in trust for Phelan.

Phelan has said he told Vaughan in January 2000 that Lowry was out of the deal but could not explain to the tribunal how he could be giving instructions to a solicitor who was acting for someone else - Lowry. No trust deed showing Vaughan to be holding the property for Phelan has been seen, and Phelan has said he has never seen or heard of one.

After the matter was brought to the attention of the Moriarty tribunal, Phelan repaid the money due to Investec. The church in Cheadle remains unsold. Likewise the property in Mansfield, held in Lowry's name, remains unsold. Lowry, it would seem, has not made a penny from his UK adventures.

There is a final point to be made, and one that it is hard to pass over. If Phelan was doing property deals with Lowry on behalf of O'Brien, could any or all of them be so reckless as to get a loan from GE Capital Woodchester for a company that the UK Register of Companies showed had Michael Lowry as a director. The other registered director was Lowry's daughter, Lorraine.

The point becomes even more difficult to pass over if, as noted by an Investec memo, Phelan told bank executives Michael Cullen and Anthony Morland in February 2001 that O'Brien was involved in the transaction.

A simple check of the UK register - something that the bank did not do at the time - would have caused a lot of trouble. In fact it was when the bank did check the register, in March of this year, that much of O'Brien's trouble began. Could the people involved really have been so reckless?