INM ‘scapegoating its former chairman’

Court hears of accusation by Buckley’s lawyers

INDEPENDENT News and Media has been accused of ‘maliciously scapegoating’ a former chairman in an attempt to avoid an inspection of its premises by corporate enforcers.

The Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement wants to inspect computer data and papers to assess if INM spied on the emails of its own staff.

And lawyers for the ODCE told the High Court that concerns over billionaire Denis O’Brien, INM’s biggest shareholder, show that an inspection of the media company should be allowed as a matter ‘of intense public interest’.

But INM claims it shouldn’t be inspected by the director, Ian Drennan, when its potential Left board: Leslie Buckley ‘rogue individual’ – INM’s exchairman Leslie Buckley – has already left the board of the newspaper group, the court heard yesterday. Under current company laws, ‘the rogue company has to have a rogue individual [currently] involved in the management’, Paul Gallagher SC, for INM, argued.

Mr Gallagher told the court yesterday that in pushing for an inspection, the ODCE is seeking to exercise an ‘extraordinary and drastic power’. He accused the ODCE of using ‘all sorts of innuendo’ in its bid to do so.

INM fears that if the inspection goes ahead, ‘talented staff may leave’, while the media company’s journalists ‘may feel constrained in their reporting of matters,’ and advertisers may ‘take their business away’, the court heard.

Arguing that Data Protection Commissioner Helen Dixon should be left to complete her own probe first, Mr Gallagher told Mr Justice Peter Kelly, president of the High Court: ‘You’re being asked to jump the gun and expose the company [INM] to two inquiries.’

Mr Buckley, who is being sued by INM in a separate legal action, has been accused of wrongfully passing ‘price-sensitive information’ to Mr O’Brien while he was chairman.

Yesterday, Judge Kelly revealed that an allegation was made in a letter to INM – from Mr Buckley’s own solicitors – that the media firm was ‘maliciously scapegoating Mr Buckley’.

Mr Buckley became chairman of INM in 2012, the same year Mr O’Brien acquired a 29.9% stake in the newspaper group. Mr Buckley stepped down from its board in March of this year, and no further details of INM’s legal action against him have officially been revealed yet.

This week, the ODCE, which has been investigating INM for the past 18 months, has gone to the High Court seeking permission to send inspectors into the newspaper group’s Dublin offices.

Brian Murray SC, for the ODCE, told the court that when it concerns ‘the majority shareholder [Mr O’Brien], who controls other media organs, it is of intense and legitimate public interest’.

The hearing continues.