MICHAEL LOWRY HAS been interviewed by gardaí from the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) who are investigating matters related to the Moriarty Tribunal. 

Lowry, a former Fine Gael Minister for Communications and current Independent TD, spoke to detectives in Irishtown Garda Station in Dublin earlier this month. Sources have said that Lowry was not arrested and had accepted an invitation from gardaí to be formally interviewed.

The CAB investigation has been ongoing for several years. Previously, a 2017 garda file did not progress to the point of a direction for prosecution by the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The latest development comes as detectives have refocused their efforts with a new examination of the findings of the Tribunal chaired by Mr Justice Michael Moriarty.

An inquiry was established in 1997 to examine payments to former Taoiseach Charles Haughey and to Lowry.

Officially called the Tribunal of Inquiry into certain Payments to Politicians and Related Matters, it took 14 years to find that former Fine Gael minister Michael Lowry had an “insidious and pervasive” influence over the awarding of Ireland’s second mobile phone licence in the 1990s to Denis O’Brien’s Esat Digifone company.

A 2011 Tribunal report found that it was “beyond doubt” that Lowry gave “substantive information” to O’Brien and that this data was “of significant value and assistance to him in securing the licence”.

It also found that O’Brien had made two secret payments to Lowry in 1996 and 1999 which amounted to £500,000 and supported a loan of £420,000 given to Lowry in 1999.

The Tribunal found that the O’Brien payments were “demonstrably referable to the acts and conduct of Mr Lowry” during the competition process which benefited Esat Digifone.
The payments were routed through a series of offshore bank accounts – travelling from the Isle of Man to Jersey and back to the Isle of Man to an account in Lowry’s name.

Denis O’Brien has rejected the findings of the Moriarty Tribunal and claimed it was based on mere “opinions” and was not findings of evidence, fact or law.

The businessman insisted that he never made any payment to Lowry “in his capacity as a government minister, as a public representative or as a private citizen”.

Lowry for his part alleged that the tribunal’s report was “factually wrong and deliberately misleading”.

Michael Lowry was contacted for comment by The Journal today. When asked if he had been interviewed by gardaí at Irishtown Garda Station, he said, “You know more than I do, so” and “that is news to me”.

When asked more simply if he had been present at Irishtown Garda Station, he neither confirmed nor denied, repeating that it was “news to me”.