Convicted fraudster Kevin Phelan, from Omagh, Co Tyrone, has been sentenced to seven years by the Crown Court in Leeds.
Between late 2013 and late 2014, 74 victims were persuaded to transfer £3.7 million of their pensions, in full or in part, into bank accounts controlled by Phelan and others.
In many cases the elderly victims were extremely vulnerable. One of Phelan’s co-conspirators boasted about one of them not knowing “what day of the week it was”.
The significance of this case is that Phelan was a key witness in the Moriarty Tribunal which was to investigate the links between Michael Lowry and businessman, Denis O’Brien—whose consortium Esat Digifone was awarded a Mobile Phone Licence in 1995 when Lowry was Minister for Communications in John Bruton’s Government.
While Phelan was a “witness”, he refused to appear before the Tribunal and the Tribunal could not compel him to do so because he was not resident in the Republic of Ireland. Therefore, his evidence was not tested by counsel for Lowry or O’Brien.
Phelan later acted as a Land agent for Lowry and O’Brien, years after the licence was awarded. Both Lowry and O’Brien claimed that their dealings with Phelan were independent of each other. But Justice Moriarty found otherwise. Based largely, if not exclusively, on leaks from Phelan to the media, he concluded that there was a relationship between O’Brien and Lowry in three UK property transactions (Mansfield, Cheadle, and Doncaster).
However, while the Judge was unable to determine the nature of that relationship, he made the assumption that the purpose of that relationship was to confer a benefit on Michael Lowry for influencing the awarding of the mobile phone licence to the O’Brien-led consortium!
As indicated in the April 2025 issue of the Irish Political Review, Phelan was not a disinterested party, he was involved in a bitter dispute with O’Brien over fees for the Doncaster development!
The Tribunal noted that Denis O’Brien’s father made a complaint to the Metropolitan Police, alleging that he was being blackmailed by Phelan.
Indeed, Phelan continued his campaign against Lowry (and by implication O’Brien), even after the Tribunal had completed its work. In 2013 he released to the Sunday Independent a tape-recording of a conversation he had had with Michael Lowry in 2004 (nine years previously!).
On this recording Lowry is begging Phelan not to release details of a payment he made to Phelan of £248,624.
Was Phelan trying to blackmail Lowry?
On this tape, it is clear that Lowry is unaware that he is being recorded. He says that this revelation will ruin him because the £248,624 came from income that he hadn’t declared to the tax authorities (the tax liability was paid in 2007).
He also declares that Phelan is trying to suggest that the transaction in question relates to the ‘Doncaster Property’ (i.e. Denis O’Brien’s investment) which, Lowry says, is not the case.
In one respect the expletive-filled recording is a damning indictment of Lowry. He is exposed as evading tax. But, in another respect, it exonerates him (and O’Brien) because he says (without knowing that he is being recorded) that the transaction did not relate to the Doncaster development but to an investment in Wigan.
The allegation that Lowry was involved in the Doncaster development was raised again last year under Dail privilege by Pearse Doherty of Sinn Fein, just after the new Government was formed with the support of Michael Lowry.
It is possible that the source of Doherty’s allegations is not Kevin Phelan, but it is difficult to think of anyone else who could be feeding the information.
The conviction of Phelan suggests that the Moriarty Tribunal’s carefully constructed case against Micheal Lowry and Denis O’Brien—an investigation costing tens of millions of euros over a period of fourteen years!—is based on the flimsiest of foundations!
John Martin
