O'Brien accuses inquiry of 'one-sided vendetta'

Businessman Denis O'Brien said yesterday he had "absolutely no faith" in the bona fides of the Moriarty tribunal's legal team, which he claimed was pursuing a "one-sided vendetta to deliver my head on a plate".

At the outset of his evidence on the Doncaster Rovers module, Mr O'Brien read out a personal statement and a memorandum of intended evidence, in which he strongly criticised the tribunal and its legal team. He accused the tribunal of bias against him. When the tribunal found something that "totally flies in the face of the findings that they want to make . . . then they will lock it away and hope it never sees the light of day", he said. His legal fees to date were €9 million and he believed the tribunal would eventually cost the State between €150 million and €200 million.

Mr O'Brien strongly criticised tribunals as operated in Ireland and said they were a form of "rough justice" akin to some court findings in Britain during the 1970s and 1980s.

He said he was making a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights arising out of failed judicial review proceedings he had taken against the tribunal in the High Court. He was disappointed that the tribunal and the courts had "failed to protect me or my reputation or my entitlement to fairness in the face of what I believe to have been a complete disregard of my human rights as guaranteed both by our Constitution and the European Court of Human Rights.

"I believe that this tribunal system creates a gross injustice and an improper invasion of the public and private lives of those persons who come up against it."

The tribunal system was "grossly flawed, grossly unfair and of little democratic effect", he said.

Mr O'Brien said tribunals did not seem to be accountable to the Oireachtas and the courts seemed unable or unprepared to protect the legitimate concerns of private individuals. Referring to tribunal chairman Mr Justice Michael Moriarty, he said: "I do not believe that it was ever envisaged when our legal system or judiciary was created that sitting High Court judges could become defendants in judicial review proceedings."

He believed it was "grossly unfair that High Court judges adjudicate on their own colleagues. The person who suffers in such instances is the litigant taking the case against the High Court judge."

He said the public's perception of tribunals was that they were courts. A finding of a tribunal was to the public no different to a guilty verdict by a judge or jury. "Indeed it is a verdict by a judge in a court by any other name but without all of the protections to which one is entitled as a matter of natural justice."

Mr O'Brien cited eight examples of what he said were instances of the Moriarty tribunal "hiding evidence". The "selective presentation of material by the tribunal legal team has happened far too often in my experience at Dublin Castle to be considered anything other than conclusive evidence of objective bias against me on the part of the tribunal legal team".

He said a number of people involved in the Doncaster inquiry who lived outside the jurisdiction had not agreed to give evidence and so he was not in a position to cross-examine them. The decision to hold public hearings on Doncaster drew attention away from the fact that the 140-day inquiry into the issuing of a mobile phone licence to Mr O'Brien's company Esat Digifone had yielded "absolutely nothing". Mr O'Brien said he had concerns about the role played by tribunal counsel Jerry Healy SC, who had acted in the past for Persona, a losing consortium in the competition won by Esat Digifone. He said solicitor Gerald Moloney, acting for Persona, had been seeking to collect information in Ireland, England and Belgium which was damaging to Mr O'Brien and which could be fed to the tribunal through Mr Healy.

Referring to a case for damages Persona is taking against the State arising out of the licence competition, Mr O'Brien said: "Is Persona using the machinery of the State to act as a stalking horse in a massive financial claim that it has taken against the State? If so, this is an extraordinary situation. Why bother spending money pursuing your case in the High Court when a tribunal will do the job for you?"

Mr O'Brien said the activities of Mr Moloney were only learned of by his legal team as a result of the O'Callaghan v Mahon tribunal judgment in the High Court.

The tribunal had taken "astonishing steps" over a considerable period of time to prevent this information coming into the public domain. This bore "testament to the fact that the tribunal knows precisely how much, and how far, it has compromised its own position in its pursuit of negative findings".