Lowry in on Doncaster deal, new letter claims

MORIARTY TRIBUNAL:A NORTHERN Ireland businessman claimed in a letter written in 2002 that the former minister Michael Lowry was to share in the proceeds from a controversial land deal in Doncaster in England, the Moriarty tribunal heard yesterday.

The tribunal was told that Kevin Phelan had said in a letter from his solicitors (Woodcock in England) to Aidan Phelan, a former accountant to the businessman Denis O’Brien, that the former minister was going to share in his 40 per cent portion of the profits arising from the Doncaster deal.

The tribunal is investigating whether the purchase of the Doncaster Rovers football club by Mr O’Brien at any time involved an effort to confer a financial benefit on Mr Lowry.

The tribunal has been told in evidence that Mr Lowry had no involvement in Mr O’Brien’s deal in Doncaster and that Mr O’Brien had not been a party to other property transactions in Mansfield and Cheadle in England involving Mr Lowry.

Details of Kevin Phelan’s comments in the 2002 letter from Woodcock solicitors emerged during evidence given by Aidan Phelan to the tribunal yesterday.

In an opening statement yesterday counsel for the tribunal John Coughlan SC said that on July 29th it had received 170 pages of documents regarding the property deals in the UK, much of which involved an exchange of correspondence between solicitors for Kevin Phelan and Aidan Phelan in 2002.

He said that some of this material had never before been brought to the attention of the tribunal.

Mr Coughlan said later during the hearing yesterday that there had been an effort to ensure that at a time when the tribunal was conducting inquiries that genuine documents did not come to its attention and that false documents were allowed to stand so that evidence could be given.

He said that in some instances documents had been removed altogether from the attention of the tribunal to enable evidence that was wholly at variance with those documents to be presented at the tribunal.

Mr Coughlan contended that Aidan Phelan had been part of this effort but the witness said that this was not the case.

However he said that he had “made a wrong call” in not providing the Woodcock correspondence to the tribunal.

Mr Coughlan said that this was the correspondence that “was causing the huge problems”. He said that it was not so much the letter itself but the enclosed documents. He said that these set out the accurate position regarding the property deals.

However Aidan Phelan said that he had never looked at these documents.

He said that he had been very annoyed at the time by the letter from Kevin Phelan, which contained allegations about him, and that he had taken a personal interest in “not letting this guy get the upper hand”.

Aidan Phelan accepted that he had not provided a complete set of all relevant documentation as had been sought by the tribunal.

However he said that he had not intended to mislead the tribunal.

Mr Phelan acknowledged that there had been a dispute with Kevin Phelan and that he considered some of the correspondence to be vexatious.

He said that Kevin Phelan had set out to do much damage to the parties and that he had made vexatious complaints to various professional institutions. He said that Kevin Phelan had made allegations that were without foundation and to put them into the public domain would have “created mayhem”.

Aidan Phelan told the tribunal that he accepted that the files on the property deals belonging to English solicitor Christopher Vaughan had been “interfered with”.

Mr Coughlan said that Mr Vaughan’s files had been interfered with to such an extent as to remove or amend documents so as to conceal the involvement of Mr Lowry.

He said that there had been an attempt to wholly mislead the tribunal as to what had transpired in relation to the property transactions.

However, Aidan Phelan said that he had had “no hand, act or part” in making changes to these documents. “I think people should talk to Kevin Phelan about what he knows,” he said.

He said that Kevin Phelan had had “wholesale access” to Mr Vaughan and his files.

Aidan Phelan told counsel for Denis O’Brien, Jim O’Callaghan, that he agreed with the evidence given by his client that the former minister had had no involvement in the Doncaster deal.

Mr O’Callaghan said that Kevin Phelan had written a letter to the tribunal in 2004 and had sworn an affidavit in 2006 that Mr Lowry was not involved.

Denis O’Brien: opinion - page 13