FINE GAEL:THE TRIBUNAL says it is regrettable that Fine Gael failed to disclose to the inquiry a $50,000 donation made to the party on behalf of Esat Digifone two months after the company won the competition for the second mobile phone licence.
The report noted that the party had a substantial degree of knowledge about the clandestine circumstances in which the payment was made and suggested it might have remained hidden but for media disclosures.
At the time of the payment, Michael Lowry was chairman of the trustees of Fine Gael, and an account holder on behalf of the party.
Mr Lowry was also minister for communications and his officials had just decided that Esat should be awarded the licence, but he did not personally benefit from the transaction.
The report says Fine Gael got a total of £22,140 in other donations from Mr O’Brien and his companies. This includes a donation of £4,000 to a golf classic in the K Club in October 1995, while the selection process for the mobile phone licence was ongoing.
Carlow-Kilkenny TD Phil Hogan was chairman of the organising committee on that occasion, and was director of elections for the Wicklow byelection earlier that year, when Mr O’Brien made a £5,000 donation to the party.
The report says the $50,000 donation was “ostensibly” made in December 1995 towards a Fine Gael fundraising dinner promoted by the late businessman David Austin, who was an associate of Mr Lowry and Denis O’Brien, and held in New York a month earlier.
The donation was made by Esat’s Norwegian partners Telenor, but was later reimbursed by Mr O’Brien’s company.
The report says that, following a conversation with Mr O’Brien in December 1995, Telenor executive Arve Johansen contacted Mr Austin and then received an invoice for $50,000 for “consultancy services” and a direction to pay the sum into a Bank of Ireland account in Jersey.
Telenor subsequently recovered the sum after sending a number of invoices to Esat.
Mr Austin informed then taoiseach John Bruton of the Esat donation, but was told that the party could not accept a payment from the source following the recent granting of the licence to the company.
The money remained in Mr Austin’s account, but was later transferred to party supporter Frank Conroy for transmission to Fine Gael and described as the balance of funds raised in connection with the New York fundraiser.
He received a cheque, payable to himself, for the punt equivalent of $50,000.
Telenor and Esat subsequently decided it should be established that the $50,000 had been received by Fine Gael and not Mr Lowry, so as to exclude the possibility he had benefited personally from the donation.
Fine Gael later returned the payment to Telenor by cheque and this was passed on to Mr O’Brien before being returned to Fine Gael following “a fractious course of dealings” between Esat shareholders.
The report says following media reports in 2001, which brought the matter to the attention of the tribunal for the first time, Fine Gael issued a bank draft covering the funds which ended up with Esat Digifone.
The payment is described in the report as being “in essence a political donation to Fine Gael”, the transmission of which to the party was “secretive, utterly lacking in transparency, and designed to conceal the fact of such payment by or on behalf of the donors”.
“The tribunal has found that the payment, although not one ever intended for Mr Lowry personally, was nonetheless one that technically falls within its terms of reference and was a payment to Fine Gael, on behalf of Esat Digifone, at the instigation and promotion of Mr Denis O’Brien.”