The possibility that Mr Denis O'Brien made two £100,000 payments, one of them to former Fine Gael minister Mr Michael Lowry, in connection with the awarding of the second mobile telephone licence to Esat Digifone in 1995, was raised at the tribunal yesterday.
Counsel for the tribunal, Mr Jerry Healy SC, said new documents had come to light in recent days which referred to the possibility that the payments were made. The recipient of the second £100,000, if it was made, is unidentified.
He said Mr O'Brien would deny ever making the payments and Mr Lowry, who was transport and communications minister when the licence was awarded, would deny receiving £100,000 from Mr O'Brien.
Counsel said the tribunal had acquired further documents surrounding the $50,000 Esat/ Telenor payment to Fine Gael and further information regarding another matter that exercised the minds of the various entities involved in the public offering of shares in Esat Telecom, a company which controlled nearly 50 per cent of Esat Digifone, in 1997.
This additional matter concerned an event which occurred in 1996 and which was brought to the attention of the tribunal by Mr Barry Maloney, the former CEO of Esat Digifone.
Counsel said Mr Maloney had told the tribunal that in or around September/October 1996 he had a discussion with Mr Denis O'Brien concerning payments which as CEO he was obliged to sanction in connection with the work done in the competition for the second GSM licence.
These payments were mainly payments due to consultants engaged by Esat Digifone solely for the purpose of promoting its competition bid. "Mr Maloney wished to clarify the obligations of the company with regard to those payments and had complained to Mr O'Brien about the lack of invoices to vouch the claims of the various consultants or others to whom success payments appeared to be due," Mr Healy said.
"In response to Mr Maloney's complaints concerning the lack of paperwork to enable him to process these payments, Mr O'Brien remarked that he himself had made two payments of £100,000, in fact he himself had had to make two payments of £100,000, one of which was to Michael Lowry," counsel said.
He said Mr Maloney was concerned he might have obligations to disclose the conversation he had had with Mr O'Brien in 1996 in the context of the IPO in 1997.
Mr Maloney sought unsuccessfully to get Mr O'Brien to postpone the IPO until after the Moriarty tribunal.
Mr Maloney also told Mr Dermot Desmond, for whom it appeared shares were beneficially held in Esat Digifone, by telephone of the allegations in October 1997.
Mr Desmond told him it was his (Mr Maloney's) job to ensure Esat Digifone was fully protected in the context of any statement made in the IPO documentation.