Denis O’Brien, the Irish telecoms and media billionaire, has launched a scathing attack on his critics, saying he has never experienced such “venom and hatred”.
O’Brien, reputedly the country’s second richest man with a fortune estimated at £3.85bn, is incensed at attempts by the media and politicians to establish details of his relationship with the former Anglo Irish Bank, the institution whose failure helped trigger Ireland’s bailout in 2010.
“I have never experienced the level of abuse, venom and hatred resulting from taking a stand to protect privacy in relation to my financial affairs,” he said on Tuesday.
His affairs came under the spotlight 11 days ago when he was granted an injunction preventing broadcaster RTÉ reporting details of his banking arrangements with the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, which houses the remains of Anglo Irish Bank.
Interest intensified on Thursday when an Irish politician, Catherine Murphy, used parliamentary privilege to suggest O’Brien had received preferential treatment from IRBC with an interest rate of 1.25% on loans of about €500m (£360m).
Murphy, an independent TD (MP), said in the Irish parliament: “IBRC could, and arguably should, have been charging 7.5%.”
What followed was an extraordinary battle, which involved international media including the Guardian and the Sunday Times reporting Murphy’s comments but local media deciding against doing so because of the injunction.
The Irish Times and RTÉ are due in the Irish high court on Tuesday to establish whether parliamentary privilege trumps a court order.
Writing in the Irish Times, O’Brien said he sought a court order against RTÉ because he expected “confidentiality in a fiduciary relationship”, whether the bank was bailed out or not, “in perpetuity”.
“Maybe I am old-fashioned but I operate on the basis that a client’s relationship with its bank is at all times confidential,” he said. O’Brien said the documents about his affairs had clearly been stolen.
The tycoon, who owns the country’s largest newspaper group and who has significant mobile telephone interests in the Caribbean including Haiti, said the first he heard of RTÉ’s investigation into his affairs was last month.
“I woke in Haiti on the morning of April 29th to a phone message saying that RTÉ had sent me a letter with questions regarding my confidential banking arrangements with Anglo Irish Bank/IBRC. My immediate reaction was astonishment that RTÉ could be used in such a way, so deliberately, to set out to damage me,” he wrote.
“What shocked me most of all was that someone would take files from a major Irish bank, tamper with them and leak them to RTÉ. In turn, RTÉ was seeking confirmation from me, via questions contained in a letter, to enable them to broadcast this information. In essence, this is what this whole storm and controversy is all about.
“Not for one minute did I ever allow external access to anyone to my private banking files. The only conclusion is that they were taken from Anglo Irish Bank/IBRC without the permission of the liquidator.”
He said Murphy’s claims about him were untrue and called on her to share with him the files she has received on him. He also took a swipe at the former attorney general Michael McDowell, who over the weekend said Murphy’s speech was in the public interest.
O’Brien said McDowell’s remarks “needed to be taken with a grain of salt”. He said McDowell “always had something to say” about him and claimed he had an underlying agenda.
