Mr Joseph Murphy snr attacked his former right-hand man, Mr James Gogarty, during his evidence in Guernsey, describing him as deceitful and accusing him of telling lie after lie.
The 82-year-old founder of the Murphy Group accused Mr Gogarty, who was a principal witness at the tribunal, of doing a lot of damage to him and of setting out to "topple" him.
Mr Murphy's criticisms came on the sixth day of the evidence he gave in Guernsey earlier this month and which was read into the public record yesterday by the tribunal registrar, Mr Peter Kavanagh, in Dublin Castle.
Mr Murphy said he had believed 100 per cent that Mr Gogarty was an honest and fair man but since the tribunal started he could see what kind of dishonesty he was associated with and he (Gogarty) planned the sale of the Murphy Group lands in north Co Dublin for quite some time with Mr Michael Bailey. Mr Gogarty got handsomely paid, he alleged.
"I trusted him, paid him well and looked after him well, holidayed him well and his wife and family to expensive hotels in London quite a few times and kept up the best of transport. He had complete control over it, cheques, he could have written a cheque to anybody," said Mr Murphy.
Asked if he had ever queried a cheque of Mr Gogarty, Mr Murphy said he had not. There was no investigation because he was not that sort of person.
"Gogarty could do wrong-doing in such a way that would be very difficult to find out . . . He's very devious."
Mr Murphy said he was pretty busy at the time in Britain and he left it all up to Mr Gogarty over there (in Ireland) and never checked him.
"Gogarty was certainly a big disappointment to me and I thought `here's one honest person' and as I say, I put him on a good pension and after a couple of years he discontinued it," Mr Murphy said.
"I was very disappointed when he turned out as has been revealed since this inquiry started, completely dishonest with lies, lies after lies. I'm still amazed, I can't get over it.
"How a man I trusted so much could do so much damage or try to blackmail me so much - very, very disappointing. All the stuff there that I read in the papers and so on, those things, are all a pack of lies.
"He's got no respect at all for the truth. He seems to try with more lies and more lies and more lies so I think he's done a lot of damage to me, a lot of damage which was his intention when he set out to topple me. I am sorry it has come to this, Mr Chairman," Mr Murphy stated.