Loan papers were not faked, says Austin widow

THE WIDOW of businessman David Austin has rejected a suggestion that her late husband might have been involved in manufacturing documents “after the event”.

Maureen Austin was responding to Michael Kelly, the solicitor for the former government minister Michael Lowry, who said it had been suggested that documents handwritten by David Austin and signed by him and Mr Lowry, might be “contrived” and manufactured “after the event”.

The documents concern a payment of £147,000 made by Mr Austin to Mr Lowry and subsequently returned by Mr Lowry.

The tribunal has been told the payment was a loan which was to be used by Mr Lowry for the refurbishment of a house on Carysfort Avenue, Blackrock, Co Dublin, work that in the event never went ahead.

The handwritten documents show the agreement to make the loan and the subsequent repayment of the money.

Ms Austin said she could not envisage her late husband doing such a thing. “Definitely not,” she said.

Ms Austin was giving evidence at the tribunal after businessman Denis O’Brien had requested that she be called. The tribunal has heard that £150,000 Mr O’Brien sent from an account in the Isle of Man went to an account opened by Mr Austin in Jersey, and that £147,000 from this money was then forwarded to an account in the Isle of Man owned by Mr Lowry.

Mr O’Brien has said he gave the money to Mr Austin as payment for a house in Spain and that the transfer, which occurred when Mr Lowry was still a minister, had nothing to do with Mr Lowry.

Ms Austin yesterday told the tribunal that she was aware in 1996 that her husband was selling the house in Spain to Mr O’Brien for £150,000 though she said she was not personally involved in any of the related dealings.

She told Stephen McCullough, for the tribunal, that she was not aware why Mr Austin, who was not resident in Ireland at the time, would want Mr O’Brien to make the payment from an offshore account.

She agreed that her husband was very unwell at the time but she said she was not told of the loan to Mr Lowry.

She said her husband was optimistic about his health. “He always thought he would live longer.”

Mr McCullough said the tribunal had never seen a document that recorded the price that would be paid for the sale of the house.

Also yesterday the tribunal chairman, Mr Justice Michael Moriarty, said he would be acceding to a request from the Department of Communications that its barrister, Richard Nesbitt SC, should be called to give evidence about legal advice he gave to the department in 1996.

At the time the department was about to award the State’s second mobile phone licence to Esat Digifone but was concerned about the fact that Dermot Desmond’s IIU Nominees, which had not be mentioned in the original bid for the licence, was by April 1996 a 20 per cent shareholder in Mr O’Brien’s consortium, Esat Digifone.

Massimo Prelz, a former senior executive with the Advent International investment capital group, said a deal he made with Mr O’Brien in 1995 at the time of Esat’s bid for the licence, was a binding commitment from Advent that it would provide up to £30 million in funding for the project if it was successful in its bid.

Mr Prelz, who is being questioned by Jacqueline O’Brien SC, for the tribunal, will continue his evidence on a date yet to be arranged.