Positive, professional relationship with tribunal 'was abused'

MICHAEL LOWRY'S ACCOUNTANT:THE "ACTIVITIES and efforts" of Denis O'Connor, accountant to Michael Lowry, were directed to "neutralising the risk of damaging information" coming to the attention of the tribunal, the Moriarty report found.

The report found Mr O’Connor abused a “positive and professional relationship” with the tribunal and “deliberately provided false responses and false statements” to it in 2004.

Mr O’Connor’s refusal to acknowledge in evidence in 2007 that he had “deliberately sought to mislead the tribunal”, and his failure to give a “truthful account of his role in seeking to preserve and protect the false version of events” was “regrettable and reprehensible”, the report said.

Mr O’Connor first met Mr Lowry socially in late 1986. In late 1996, he was asked to examine Mr Lowry’s personal financial affairs.

He negotiated transactions in relation to deals in England which involved Mr Lowry and he was also involved in solving a dispute over Doncaster Rovers Football Club.

The club was bought by Denis O’Brien in 1998.

The report found Mr O’Connor had been “instrumental in the provision of a false explanation” by businessman Kevin Phelan to solicitor Christopher Vaughan with the intention that it would be transmitted to the tribunal.

Mr O’Connor had also attended a meeting at the Regency Airport Hotel in March 2001 which developed a strategy to provide the tribunal with “an untruthful account of Mr Lowry’s involvement in the UK property transactions”.

The report acknowledged that Mr O’Connor was not “acting on his own account” but was “doing the bidding and seeking to serve the interests of others”.

“The tribunal is in no doubt that those others were, primarily, Mr Michael Lowry, and secondarily, Mr Denis O’Brien,” the report said.