Telenor would never have made the payment of $50,000 requested by Mr Denis O'Brien if its chairman had realised its real nature at the outset, the tribunal heard.
Mr Arve Johansen said that as time went by and Telenor learned more about how the payment was to be made, "we were a little bit more reluctant about it".
He agreed with Mr Jerry Healy, for the tribunal, that the nature of the payment had been revealed in "incremental layers". Telenor had first been asked for the payment, then it had learned it would be invoiced for "consultancy work" from a London address and then that David Austin had wanted the payment made to an offshore account in Jersey.
Asked whether he thought there was anything improper about the donation, Mr Johansen said Telenor still thought it was "unusual".
"But if Denis O'Brien, who was the guarantor for the Irish operation, considered it proper and correct to do it, it was kind of hard for us to overrule his judgment on that."
When Esat eventually came to repay the $50,000 to Telenor, three invoices were produced because the first two, one bearing David Austin's name, were not acceptable to "the Irish side", Mr Johansen believed.
The full sum, the Irish pound equivalent of the $50,000 and 316,000 Norwegian Krone, was £31,300. It was eventually paid by Esat as part of a larger sum in June 1996.
Asked whether Telenor had ever been asked for a donation in the course of its activities in other countries, Mr Johansen replied: "We have been asked in certain contexts to pay a substantial amount to people who say they would guarantee us a licence somewhere and it has always been refused."