MORIARTY TRIBUNAL:AN ENGLISH solicitor has said evidence he gave the Moriarty tribunal in April concerning the former government minister Michael Lowry was "clearly wrong".
He also said that evidence he gave on Tuesday concerning why he had not produced certain documents to the tribunal back in 2001, was also incorrect.
Christopher Vaughan, who acted in property deals in Mansfield and Cheadle in the late 1990s that involved Mr Lowry and businessman Denis O’Brien’s then accountant, Aidan Phelan, said some letters from his files had been removed and some altered.
He said he brought his files to a meeting in Clonskeagh, Dublin, in March 2001, and left them with Mr Phelan and his associate Helen Malone, when he returned to England. He said he believed the file was returned to him by the time of a meeting some weeks later in the Regency Airport Hotel, Dublin.
He agreed with Jerry Healy SC, for the tribunal, that all of the letters that were altered had references to Mr Lowry removed from them, and that all the letters that had not been produced until this week indicated Mr Lowry was involved with the Cheadle property after a date at which the tribunal had been told Mr Phelan had taken ownership of the deal.
On Tuesday Mr Vaughan said that certain letters he had written and which had not been produced by him to the tribunal in 2001, had been in a file which he had discarded. However, following questioning from Mr Healy he agreed these letters must have been in the file the rest of the contents of which were given to the tribunal in 2001.
The tribunal was given documents on Monday by Mr Vaughan that had in turn been given to him some weeks ago by Northern Ireland land agent Kevin Phelan, who had identified the Mansfield and Cheadle properties as potential investments in the late 1990s.
The documents included letters from Mr Vaughan to Mr Phelan, which mentioned Mr Lowry in relation to the Cheadle property.
Mr Vaughan told the tribunal in April that a reference to Mr Lowry in a letter dated September 5th, 2000, concerning Cheadle was a mistake and that the reference should have been to Aidan Phelan. “Saying it was Michael was rubbish. It’s nothing to do with Michael Lowry,” Mr Vaughan said on that occasion. He said it was for this reason that the signed letter, which was addressed to Kevin Phelan, was re-written with Aidan Phelan’s name. However, as a result of the new letters given to the tribunal this week, Mr Vaughan agreed that the reference to Mr Lowry was correct.
Given that his earlier reason for why the letter was altered was now “unsustainable”, Mr Healy asked why the letter was changed. “I don’t know,” said Mr Vaughan.
He said that when he made his original statement he had been trying to “piece things together” from the documents then available. His April evidence was “quite clearly wrong”, he said.
Mr Vaughan also agreed with Mr Healy when he said some of his evidence in April was based on what he had said at the time was his recollection. “I put forward an explanation in April for why [the letter] had been changed. That was my firm view at that time.”
Mr Vaughan agreed that the letter was entirely re-typed, but had been correct in its original form. He agreed the inference could be drawn that what was produced to the tribunal back in 2001, was “intended to exclude Michael Lowry from these transactions” at a particular date. Asked if his file could have been interfered with, Mr Vaughan said that “if I hadn’t got control of the file, I can’t say what others might have done with it.” *Mr Vaughan’s evidence continues today.