Denis O’Brien has applied for a court order to reveal the person who commissioned an alleged conspiracy to undermine the $2 billion flotation of Digicel, his telecoms company, on the New York stock exchange.
Mr O’Brien cancelled the initial public offering of shares last week, blaming negative market sentiment. He has since said that a dossier of defamatory material created by Red Flag Consultancy, an Irish PR company, was being circulated to undermine the chances of the float going ahead successfully.
Yesterday lawyers for Mr O’Brien told the High Court that Red Flag Consultancy had spread documents “rife with defamatory material” as part of a conspiracy to harm his interests. He is claiming damages for unlawful conspiracy to damage him and his businesses and for defamation. Red Flag is fully defending the case.
Red Flag is chaired by Gavin O’Reilly, the former chief executive of Independent News and Media (INM), and its chief executive is Karl Brophy, a former senior executive at INM, who departed shortly after Mr O’Brien’s associates took control of the publishing company.
Mr O’Brien is taking action against both Mr Brophy and Mr O’Reilly in addition to Séamus Conboy, the company’s director of client communications, Brid Murphy, an account manager, and Kevin Hinney, an account executive
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Last Friday, Mr O’Brien’s lawyers told the High Court he had received a memory stick containing the Red Flag material from an anonymous source.
Ireland’s richest man said that before receiving the documents he had commissioned private investigators to discover whether a series of negative media articles published about him were deliberate. He said these investigations “presumably prompted” someone to deliver him the USB stick.
Michael Collins, senior counsel for Red Flag, said the company was seriously concerned about how Mr O’Brien had obtained the dossier.
It was said in court that Red Flag had made a complaint to the gardai about the leaking of the material. Mr Collins said the company’s computers were either hacked or someone was “persuaded” to copy and send the material from Red Flag’s systems. The company questions whether this process was lawful.
Judge Colm MacEochaidh ordered that the USB stick contaning the alleged dossier be preserved ahead of a trial, as Red Flag wants its IT experts to inspect it.
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The dossier contained 82 newspaper articles about Mr O’Brien, Digicel and the Moriarty Tribunal, as well as other documents, including one about his experience in the IPO of Esat Telecom in November 1997.
The file also contained a draft speech written for Colm Keaveney, a Fianna Fail TD, for a debate on the Commission of Investigation into Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, which involved some of Mr O’Brien’s business dealings.
In court, Michael Cush, senior counsel for Mr O’Brien, said Espion, an IT consultancy, had established that parts of the speech Mr Keaveney delivered in the Dail were authored by Mr Brophy.
“It begs the question, who paid him to craft a speech to be delivered under privilege in the Dail?” Mr Cush said.
Mr Keaveney has declined to comment on his association with Red Flag.
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In the speech of June 9, Mr Keaveney compared the award of a mobile phone licence to Esat Telecom in 1997 with IBRC’s sale of Siteserv, a construction services company, to a company owned by Mr O’Brien.
“Fine Gael and Labour in government have (once again) enriched the same person,” he said . “Criminality was already uncovered by the Moriarty tribunal. Where is the garda investigation? Where is the Criminal Assets Bureau?”
Mr O’Brien has said he believed the dossier was designed to assist TDs in ttacking him using parliamentary privilege. He had originally sought a court order to search Red Flag’s offices and seize material. However, the court instead ordered Red Flag to preseve its computers and files ahead of further investigations.