chief executive Robert Pitt and former chief financial officer Ryan Preston, in protected disclosures made in 2016, were central to the appointment in 2018 of inspectors Sean Gillane SC and Richard Fleck, whose report was published on Wednesday.
When they later became aware of the arrangement, Pitt and INM director Jerome Kennedy sought advice from Davy Finance and solicitors McCann Fitzgerald, given the relationship between O’Brien and Island Capital. The inspectors decided it would not have been in accordance with good governance for INM to have engaged the services of Island Capital, unless the engagement had been approved by the INM board.
In their protected disclosures, Pitt and Preston said Buckley put improper pressure on them to increase INM’s valuation of Newstalk. The people listed included two barristers who had worked for the Moriarty tribunal, which investigated the awarding of the State’s second mobile phone licence to O’Brien’s Esat Digifone, as well as a lawyer who worked for Cable & Wireless, a competitor business to O’Brien’s Digifone group in the Caribbean.
They concluded that O’Brien’s knowledge of what was going on was limited to the McAleese contract issue, and he was not aware that the scope of the Mizak inquiry had widened. O’Brien, they decided, agreed to pay for the work because Buckley told him it would be embarrassing for Buckley to have to explain to INM the costs were incurred as part of a cost-cutting exercise.