A NI businessman talks on a secretly recorded videotape about UK deals involving Michael Lowry and Denis O'Brien. Colm Keena, Public Affairs Correspondent, reports.
Last week in England a seemingly secretly recorded three-and-a- half hour tape of a business meeting was shown to The Irish Times.
In the course of the tape a Northern Ireland businessman, Kevin Phelan, discusses in detail aspects of property deals he was involved in and which are now being investigated by the Moriarty Tribunal. The date on the tape is February 6th, 2002.
Mr Phelan acted as agent in three property deals that are being investigated by the tribunal. One involves the Doncaster football stadium, which was bought in August 1998 for £4.3 million (€6.4 million). The intention was to build a new stadium on a greenfield site and redevelop the site of the old stadium.
Mr Phelan says on the tape that after a further investment of approximately £5 million, a profit of up to £6 million could be realised. Denis O'Brien has said he is the exclusive owner of the Doncaster property.
Two other deals discussed on the tape involve properties in Mansfield and Cheadle. Again Mr Phelan located these properties and oversaw their purchase. The properties were bought in March and December 1999 for a total of £665,000. The former minister for transport, energy and communications, Michael Lowry, has told the tribunal Mr Phelan introduced him to these deals and that he invested in them. The tribunal is investigating whether any of the financing involved came from Mr O'Brien. It is also investigating whether Mr Lowry had any connection with the Doncaster deal.
The video recording opens with two men sitting on opposite sides of the table in a sparsely furnished, ground floor conference room, exchanging pleasantries. Somebody, somewhere, is setting the sound levels.
The two men who can be seen are Mr Phelan and Mark Weaver. Mr Weaver is an associate of Ken Richardson, the former majority owner of Doncaster Rovers Football Club Ltd (DRFC), which holds the lease on the Doncaster football stadium. Mr Richardson was jailed in 1999 in relation to an earlier attempt to have the stadium burned down.
Soon after the sound levels are set, Mr Richardson enters the room.
From the film it is apparent that the camera is situated in a corner of the room, at ceiling level, opposite the window and so Mr Phelan's face can be seen. All three men act, and speak, as if there is no camera there. The Irish Times has been told that the recording was made without Mr Phelan's knowledge.
In February 2002, the date on the recording, Mr Phelan and Mr Richardson were both involved in disputes over money they said they were due from the Doncaster deal. In Mr Phelan's case he was seeking fees he claimed he was owed. Mr Richardson was in dispute over a £700,000 retention fund, money that was put aside at the time of the Doncaster sale, to be given to Mr Richardson if no unforeseen expenses arose.
Both men were seeking to get funds from Mr O'Brien or related entities to settle these disputes. At the meeting, Mr Phelan suggests that he and Mr Richardson work together, in secret.
During the discussion Mr Phelan mentions the Moriarty Tribunal's decision to conduct an inquiry into the 1995 second mobile phone licence competition, which was won by Mr O'Brien's Esat Digifone. Mr Lowry was minister for communications at the time. During 2002 the tribunal was involved in private inquiries into the licence competition. Public hearings opened in December 2002.
In the course of the discussion on the tape Mr Phelan makes the following comment concerning Mr Lowry: "I was dealing with this particular individual in Ireland [ Mr Lowry] and my instructions from him were to get two or three deals that would come to fruition in three to five years. He had a tax problem and he didn't want to earn the money now. He wanted the money when he had his tax problems out of the way. He wanted long-term projects."
Mr Lowry was the subject of a Revenue inquiry following the 1997 McCracken (Dunnes payments) Tribunal.
"He was a minister in the government. He had just finished. I felt he had good contacts, would be useful, and helpful, blah, blah, blah," Mr Phelan says.
Mr Phelan makes a series of statements on the tape that cannot be published for legal reasons.
On the tape Mr Phelan says of the tribunal: "You can't mess with those guys. They're even worse than a court. This weekend, for the third time, an MP, Lawlor, has been sent to jail for not co-operating." (On Tuesday, February 5th, 2002, Liam Lawlor began a one-month sentence for not cooperating with the Flood, now Mahon, Tribunal.)
On the tape Mr Phelan discusses his dispute with Mr O'Brien and with a Dublin accountant who worked with Mr O'Brien called Aidan Phelan (no relation of Kevin Phelan). Kevin Phelan says on the tape that he is still having dealings with Mr Lowry and is still friendly with him, as he is with Mr Lowry's accountant, Denis O'Connor.
He says there had been attempts to settle his claim about fees that were due to him but that they did not lead to a resolution. He proposes that if the two sides work together they can get settlements more quickly that they would by going through the legal process.
Mr Phelan on the tape says he had a solicitor in Bury, Ruth Cox, get on to Mr O'Brien, Aidan Phelan, Mr O'Connor, Mr Lowry and UK solicitor Christopher Vaughan, in relation to disputes over fees arising from the various UK deals. He says on the tape that he intends to sue. Mr Vaughan acted for the purchasers in the Cheadle, Mansfield and Doncaster deals. He has refused to give evidence to the tribunal.
Mr Phelan says that all his agreements with Mr Lowry were verbal and that he'd never had a problem. "He's a trustworthy guy."
On the tape Mr Phelan produces a number of documents including a letter from Mr Vaughan to Mr Lowry concerning the Doncaster deal. A copy of this letter was shown to The Irish Times in January 2003 and the resultant report led to the tribunal beginning inquiries into whether Mr Lowry was linked to the Doncaster deal.
The tribunal has held hearings at which the content of the letter was read into the public record and a copy of the letter displayed on an overhead projector.
Mr Vaughan has told the tribunal, in correspondence, that the letter was written when he was under the misapprehension that Mr Lowry was connected with the Doncaster deal and that he no longer believes that to be the case. He has met tribunal lawyers in London but will not come to Dublin to give evidence.
In the tape Mr Phelan lets Mr Richardson and Mr Weaver look at the letter but does not let them copy it. Referring to the letter he says: "If we go that far, I'm shafting [ Mr Lowry] I don't want to land Michael in the shit, to be fair."
A second letter, again from Mr Vaughan, is also handed over. This letter deals with business matters to do with the assets of an Isle of Man company called Westferry, which was used to purchase Doncaster. Mr Phelan allows Mr Richardson to make a copy of this letter.
During the tape Mr Phelan says that he has seen the client accounts from Mr Vaughan's practice.
When at one stage Mr Richardson says he knows of Mr Lowry from horseracing circles, and that he's "a decent bloke", Mr Phelan responds: "I've no problem with him. I met him two weeks ago."
As the tape nears the end, Mr Phelan and Mr Weaver leave the room. Mr Richardson stands for a moment, alone in the room, then exits. A door can be heard opening and closing. Then another door. Footsteps can be heard approaching. Then the camera is turned off.
Mr Lowry would not comment when contacted yesterday by The Irish Times. "It is a matter for the tribunal," he said. A spokesman for Mr O'Brien said he would not be commenting.
Mr Richardson and Mr Weaver turned up unannounced at the tribunal last year and had an unscheduled meeting with its lawyers. At that meeting they claimed to have a secretly recorded tape but they did not produce it as requested by the tribunal. The tribunal has since ceased communicating with the two men as it believes its confidential communications with them might be forwarded to third parties.
In September last year, during a public sitting of the tribunal, Jerry Healy SC, for the tribunal, said it believed Mr Richardson and Mr Weaver had an interest in trying to damage the reputation of Mr O'Brien.
Mr Denis O'Brien Snr has made a complaint to the police in London, alleging attempted blackmail by Mr Richardson and Mr Weaver, in the context of trying to resolve the dispute over the retention fund. Part of the complaint involves the letter from Mr Vaughan to Mr Lowry concerning the Doncaster deal.
Persona, the consortium that came second in the 1995 mobile phone licence competition and which is suing the State in a potentially huge damages claim, has had meetings with Mr Weaver. The High Court heard earlier this year that a representative of Persona may have urged Mr Weaver to come to Dublin to give evidence.
During a High Court application earlier this year to halt public hearing into the Doncaster issue, Eoin McGonigal SC, for Mr O'Brien, pointed out in the High Court that Mr Richardson and Mr Weaver keep coming in and out of the Doncaster story, making serious allegations against people but not making themselves available to give evidence on oath to the tribunal or to be cross-examined by parties against whom they make their allegations.
The High Court application failed and the matter is now being appealed to the Supreme Court.
Next week the chairman of the tribunal, Mr Justice Michael Moriarty, will give his ruling on legal submissions made two weeks ago by Mr O'Brien and other parties. The submissions called for the licence competition inquiry to be abandoned because an important potential witness, Danish consultant Michael Andersen, will not come to Dublin to give evidence. Mr Andersen worked with the team of civil servants who decided the Esat Digifone bid was the best. All the civil servants involved have given evidence to the tribunal that Mr Lowry did not interfere with the competition process.
