The chairman of the Persona consortium denied he was using the tribunal as a "stalking horse" in preparation for the huge claim it is making against the State.
Tony Boyle said it was not the case that Persona had sent a series of unsolicited submissions to the tribunal to "steer it" in a particular direction and to "vilify" civil servants involved in the competition.
Persona, the consortium that came second in the 1995 mobile phone licence competition, is seeking damages from the State over its management of the licence process.
It could win more than €100 million in damages if it is successful. Persona is now owned in a 50/50 partnership by Mr Boyle and his business partner, Michael McGinley.
Mr Boyle, chairman of the Sigma Communications Group, said Persona is still in the process of gathering information for its case. He said the tribunal had uncovered "significant evidence of major flaws in the process" during its inquiry into the competition.
Senior counsel John O'Donnell, for the Department of Transport, Energy and Communications, which ran the competition, asked Mr Boyle if he personally had any evidence of any wrongdoing by any of the civil servants involved. Mr Boyle said he did not want to answer the question on legal grounds, but when asked later by the chairman, Mr Justice Moriarty, he said he had no specific evidence of dishonesty for the tribunal.
Mr O'Donnell said Mr Boyle and Persona had, in correspondence with the tribunal, made a litany of complaints about the competition process, yet Mr Boyle was now saying he had no evidence of any impropriety by any of the civil servants who ran the licence competition.
Mr O'Donnell referred to a memo of a private meeting with members of the tribunal's legal team on May 1st, 2001, in which it was stated that "as far as Tony Boyle is concerned the reality is that strings were pulled by [ department secretary John] Loughrey, Lowry and [ civil servant Martin] Brennan.
"They constructed the criteria, the weightings and effectively had [ Danish consultants] Andersons rubber stamp them. Whoever had access to the weightings of the criteria won the competition."
Elsewhere the memo states: "Tony Boyle got a strong tip some four to six weeks ago that David Austin was one of the owners of the 20 per cent [ of Esat Digifone] held by IIU Nominees. Somebody who was named in the process got a message to Tony Boyle. He was also convinced that Ben Dunne had put some money into it [ part of the £100 million received in the settlement of litigation]."
Referring to the strings-being- pulled allegation, Mr O'Donnell said it was hard to think of a more serious allegation that could be made against a departmental official. Mr Boyle said it was an expression of his opinion and he was not alleging the civil servants did anything wrong. Asked if he now withdrew the allegation that "strings were pulled", Mr Boyle said he did not.
"You are prepared to blacken the names of these departmental officials because of your ire at not being awarded the licence," Mr O'Donnell said.
"It was my opinion and is now more than ever my opinion," Mr Boyle said. He said he did not agree that the comment recorded in the memo was pejorative.
He said it was his right "as a citizen and an interested party" to make submissions to the tribunal.
The cross-examination of Mr Boyle by counsel for Denis O'Brien is to continue today.