A solicitor who acted for businessman Denis O'Brien in Britain told the Moriarty tribunal that she did not believe former communications minister Michael Lowry was involved in Mr O'Brien's purchase of Doncaster Rovers soccer club in England.
Ruth Collard, a lawyer with UK firm, Peter Carter-Ruck solicitors, also agreed that claims that Mr Lowry was involved in the deal could have been designed to discredit Mr O'Brien and put pressure on him.
Mr O'Brien bought Doncaster Rovers through a family trust in 1998 for £4.3 million (€6.3 million), and has always insisted he alone did the deal and that Mr Lowry had no involvement.
Mr O'Brien's Esat group won the second mobile telephone licence granted by the State in 1995.
Mr Lowry was communications minister and ran the Government department which gave Esat the licence following a competition involving four bidders.
Mr O'Brien sold Esat to BT in 2000 for £2.9 billion, one of the biggest such deals done in the history of the State.
The tribunal is investigating the granting of the licence and possible links between Mr O'Brien and Mr Lowry.
Ms Collard gave her evidence to tribunal lawyers at a special sitting in London some time ago. This was read into the record yesterday.
The Doncaster deal became the subject of a dispute involving the sellers Ken Richardson and Mark Weaver, and Mr O'Brien.
A line in Ms Collard's note of a meeting involving herself and Denis O'Connor, an accountant who acted for Mr O'Brien, and another lawyer, Craig Tallent, in 2002, suggests that Mr O'Connor said that Mr Lowry had been present at a meeting held to discuss the Doncaster deal.
However, Mr O'Connor said he had not made that statement, while Mr Tallent's notes of the same meeting make no mention of it. Under questioning from Mr Lowry's counsel, Ms Collard said that she did not believe that the statement was true in any case.
She said that the meeting referred to in her notes, had it taken place at all, would have been "crucial" to the litigation.
She added that had she believed it to be true, she would have sought a statement from Mr Lowry.
Ms Collard said she was aware that the tribunal's investigations involved both Mr O'Brien and Mr Lowry and agreed that it would suit a number of people, including Doncaster's sellers, to link them in an attempt to discredit the businessman.
Another UK solicitor, Christopher Vaughan, wrote to Mr Lowry in 1998 about his involvement in the Doncaster deal.
The Irish Times published details of this letter, which subsequently sparked the Moriarty tribunal's inquiry into the transaction.
Mr Vaughan has already told the tribunal in a letter, that he wrote to Mr Lowry under a misapprehension. The solicitor refused to come to Dublin to testify before the tribunal.
Ms Collard said that her understanding was that Mr Vaughan was mistaken when he wrote the letter to Mr Lowry.