Watchdog is accused by O’Brien of leaking court papers
BUSINESSMAN Denis O’Brien has accused the State’s corporate watchdog of leaking information in court papers related to its application to have inspectors appointed to Independent News & Media (INM).
Mr O’Brien, who is INM’s largest shareholder, has claimed that as a result of leaks he has been subjected to extraordinary and intensifying levels of media coverage which suggests he was involved in wrongdoing.
The High Court heard Mr O’Brien sent a letter to Ian Drennan, the Director of Corporate Enforcement, on April 6.
According to Neil Steen SC, for the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE), Mr O’Brien suggested the watchdog facilitated media access to an affidavit filed with the High Court. Mr O’Brien said that if the ODCE had not provided such access, it did not take adequate steps to restrict access to the affidavit.
In the letter, Mr O’Brien referred to the trial of former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive Sean FitzPatrick. This trial collapsed and Mr FitzPatrick was acquitted after it emerged documents had been shredded by the ODCE’s lead investigator Kevin O’Connell. A judge also found the ODCE took “an inappropriately biased and partisan approach” to the investigation.
Mr O’Brien said that in the aftermath of that trial he would have expected the ODCE to take care in relation to access to the document. “I intend to hold you fully and personally responsible for all such failing,” Mr O’Brien told Mr Drennan (inset above).
The businessman also said the alleged leaking of the affidavit was causing damage to his reputation.
Mr Steen said the ODCE wrote back to Mr O’Brien on April 13 rejecting his allegations. The ODCE, he said, had not facilitated any third party with access to the affidavit.
The watchdog also pointed out that the INM investigation had been ongoing for a year with no information appearing in the media. It was only after the papers had been served on INM and its board, as the ODCE was required to do, that media reports began to appear. Mr O’Brien was told that if any other parties had been given access to the affidavit, the ODCE was not responsible for this.
Among the matters the ODCE wants inspectors to investigate is an alleged major data breach at INM, where IT back-up tapes were taken out of the country and “interrogated”.
The data of current and former journalists, as well as former staff and board members, is feared to have been searched. INM has said the data was provided to a third party service provider on the instructions of then INM chairman Leslie Buckley. The ODCE says invoices associated with the so-called data interrogation were discharged by a company owned by Mr O’Brien, a close business associate of Mr Buckley.
Mr Buckley has also criticised what he described as “the widespread circulation and sharing” of Mr Drennan’s affidavit, which, he said, contained “the most serious and damaging of allegations relating to my tenure as chairman of INM”.
In his only statement to date on the affair, he pledged to robustly defend his position.
Mr O’Brien has made no comment in response to media queries. The disclosure of his letter in court yesterday is the first time his thoughts on the matter have come into the public domain.
The ODCE affidavit outlines claims by former INM chief executive Robert Pitt that he was put under pressure by Mr Buckley to place a higher valuation on Newstalk, a radio station owned by Mr O’Brien which INM had considered buying. The deal was abandoned.
Mr Pitt also had concerns over a proposal, later withdrawn, that a success fee be paid to a company owned by Mr O’Brien in connection with the sale of INM’s shares in an Australian media group.
“I intend to hold you fully responsible for all such failings,” Denis O’Brien told ODCE director Ian Drennan