An English solicitor has confirmed that he wrote a 1998 letter which links Mr Michael Lowry to a £4 million sterling property deal in Doncaster.
The solicitor, Mr Christopher Vaughan, said he wrote the letter when under the misapprehension that Mr Lowry was involved in the deal. He said this subsequently transpired to be incorrect.
Mr Denis O'Brien told the Moriarty (Payments to Politicians) Tribunal in October 2001 that he bought the property and is still the owner.
Mr O'Brien's former accountant, Mr Aidan Phelan, has told The Irish Times that Mr O'Brien has at all times owned the property and that this can be demonstrated and will be shown to be so.
"I was the project manager with this transaction up to fairly recently and I can say that Michael Lowry had no involvement in this transaction at any stage."
At the time the letter was written, Mr Vaughan was working with Mr Lowry in relation to the purchase of a property in Mansfield for about £250,000 sterling.
A letter from Mr Vaughan to Mr Lowry dated September 25th, 1998, and which has been seen by The Irish Times is headed: "Re Doncaster Rovers Football Club Ltd". The company own the lease on a stadium in Doncaster. The two-page letter reads, in part; "I had not appreciated your total involvement in the Doncaster Rovers' transaction".
Mr Vaughan, when contacted, said he couldn't discuss the letter. "I can't talk without my clients' consent, not that they are my clients any more," he said.
However, he then agreed he had written a letter which "sounds like the one" seen by The Irish Times. He said he had written to Mr Lowry in relation to the Doncaster stadium.
"It was written by me but rapidly forgotten by me because I don't think Michael Lowry had anything to do with the matter."
Mr Vaughan said it became apparent subsequent to the letter being written that Mr Lowry had "no involvement in Doncaster at all."
"It was represented to me by someone else that he had an involvement in it," Mr Vaughan said. He would not say who this person was. He said it was during a trip to Leicester, mentioned in the letter, that it was said to him that Mr Lowry might be able to assist. Mr Lowry was with him on this trip but Mr Vaughan would not explain the matter further.
Mr Vaughan said he wrote the letter to Mr Lowry as he believed Mr Lowry could solve some of the problems outlined in the letter. "It quickly emerged that he was not involved."
He said that during the acquisition of Doncaster Rovers Football Club Ltd he never got any instructions from Mr Lowry in relation to the matter.
Mr Vaughan said he had not changed his mind in relation to attending the Moriarty tribunal. "I have no intention of coming to the tribunal," he said. He said he was aware the police in the UK were investigating the "misuse" of the letter.
Last year copies of two letters from Mr Vaughan to Mr Kevin Phelan, a Northern Ireland businessman who was involved in property deals in the UK, were given to The Irish Times. The letters concerned a property in Cheadle which had been bought by Mr Lowry using Mr Vaughan.
The copies of the letters given to The Irish Times were different from the versions given to the tribunal by both Mr Vaughan and Mr Phelan.
It seems the copies given to The Irish Times were the correct versions and that the amended versions given earlier to the tribunal were changed so as to excise Mr Lowry's name.
The changes had the effect of indicating that Mr Lowry was no longer involved with the property at the dates on the letters, July and September 2000.
One of the excised passages reads: "I have not written to Michael about this as I get concerned about correspondence going to him".
Both Mr Vaughan and Mr Kevin Phelan are refusing to come to Dublin to give evidence. Mr Vaughan has said the letters about Cheadle may have been written in error and that he sometimes became confused when dealing with the Cheadle transaction.
Mr Aidan Phelan, a Dublin accountant who was involved in the Cheadle transaction, has said he believes the letters given to The Irish Times last year are forgeries created by someone to cause mischief.
