In the sweltering Caribbean heat and hu-midity of an October day, 223 people gath-ered on the lawns of King’s House, the offi-cial residence of the governor-general of Ja-maica.

The three-storey mansion on Kingston’sHope Road looks everything one would ex-pect from a colonial statement erected in1872 and rebuilt in 1907, after an earth-quake destroyed it.

Gleaming white, it is set in substantialgrounds, a mix of rolling lawns and bedsfull of flowering shrubs, and is approachedby a mile-long driveway named Palm TreeAvenue.

The garden party atmosphere on Mon-day, October 19th, was completed by thecrisp movements of the governor’s militaryguard of honour dressed in bright-red tu-nics, white gloves and smartly pressedblack trousers with crimson stripes downthe sides.

When his name was called out, DenisO’Brien stepped forward and the governorgeneral, Sir Patrick Linton Allen, placedover his shoulder and across his chest, asash – emerald green, yellow and black, thecolours of Jamaica.

O’Brien then bowed his head and Sir Pat-rick placed a green ribbon and medalaround his neck, before handing him asmall, burgundy tube, the scroll containinghis award: an honorary Order of Jamaica,the equivalent of the British knighthood.

The citation read “for his sterling contri-bution to the development of the telecom-munications industry in Jamaica” throughhis company Digicel.

Behind the bestowing of the honour layappreciation for 1,500 Digicel jobs in Ja-maica and the support the company’s foun-dation has given on the island to education,special needs and entrepreneurship.

The Irish billionaire may now style him-self, should he so choose, as the Honoura-ble Denis O’Brien. He is already being de-scribed as “Denis O’Brien, OJ” in invites fora conference to be held later this week.

FreneticactivityThe poised, elegant calm of the governor’smansion and marquees was in stark con-trast to the frenetic activity that had bythen been unleashed back in Dublin byO’Brien’s latest foray into the Irish courts.

Six days before his Kingston investiture,O’Brien had sworn a 21-page affidavit in theSingaporean offices of Kuek Cheow Kiong,a notary public, alleging that he had beenthe victim of “conspiracy, defamation, mali-cious falsehood, and unlawful conduct”.

O’Brien’s complaints were global intheir reach: “In recent times, and particu-larly in the last 12 months, I have becomeconscious that there is a campaign to dam-age me personally and professionally andto damage my business interests.

“Specifically, I have been the subject oftargeted campaign to undermine me andto disseminate false statements about me.

“In addition to this, confidential informa-tion relating to me has been leaked and/orattempts have been made to leak such infor-mation.

“This false information has been dissemi-nated in numerous ways, which prevent mefrom dealing with the false allegationsmade about me,” the affidavit, which hasbeen seen by The Irish Times, reads.

“I am satisfied that this campaign hasbeen ongoing for some time,” he went on,“[It] is evident from the frequency withwhich I find myself subject to such negativecomments.

“Similarly, the manner in which I findmyself targeted made me believe that iswas a structured and organised campaign.For example, there were many instancesover the last 12 months where I would re-ceive similar if not identical questions fromreporters within the same day, as if infor-mation was being disseminated in a pat-terned way.”

As O’Brien was receiving his Jamaicanhonour, the billionaire’s lawyers and IT spe-cialists were by then already working hardagainst the target of his ire – the Dublin of-fices of Red Flag Consultants.

Prompted by a High Court order grant-ed on Friday, October 16th, staff from thepublic affairs company were already flyinginto Dublin, some from offices in Londonand Brussels.

Including the company’s non-executivechairman, Los Angeles-based Gavin O’Reil-ly, they had come back so that their Mac-book Air computers could be examinedalong with computers in Red Flag’s ElyPlace offices, and also their smartphones.

Waiting for them were O’Brien’s IT ex-perts from Espion, a Dublin-based firm ofcomputer forensic investigators and dataanalysts. Red Flag had theirs too, from theLondon-based Stroz Friedberg, both adeptat extracting digital information.

The High Court order granted toO’Brien directed that certain informationheld by Red Flag be preserved for later ex-amination when the substance of O’Brien’sassertion – that there is an unlawful and de-famatory conspiracy against him – can betested in court, though a more draconian le-gal instrument sought by O’Brien was re-fused.

Several of the people named in the orderhave strong historical connections to Inde-pendent News and Media (INM), control ofwhich O’Brien wrested from Gavin O’Reil-ly’s father, Tony O’Reilly, after a long, andat times bitterly fought boardroom andshareholder battle.

The others are: Gavin O’Reilly, a formerchief executive of INM; Karl Brophy, chiefexecutive of Red Flag and a former execu-tive of INM who departed after O’Briengained effective control of INM; SéamusConboy, Red Flag director of client cam-paigns; Bríd Murphy, a Red Flag accountmanager and social media specialist em-ployed previously with Fine Gael; andKevin Hiney, a Red Flag account executivewith prior experience, as an Irish diplomat,of the British and European parliaments.

At the core of O’Brien’s concerns is a dos-sier of 339 files contained in 40 folders onan encrypted SanDisk USB memory stick –most are PDFs, bar four Word documents,four Powerpoint presentations and two vid-eos.

The overwhelming majority are newspa-per cuttings detailing O’Brien’s businessand humanitarian activities, though three– entitled Who is Denis O’Brien?, DenisO’Brien IPO Experience, and The MoriartyTribunal Explainer – are original texts.

In the words of a source, who has spokento The Irish Times on condition of anonymi-ty, the latter are “a Fisher-Price guide toDenis O’Brien written for people who havenever heard of Denis O’Brien”.

Nonetheless, the only person known tohave obtained access to the dossier outsideRed Flag, prior to Denis O’Brien receivinga copy, is UK-based freelance journalistMark Hollingsworth, who received it fromRed Flag via Dropbox, the file-sharing in-ternet service.

Sometime after Hollingsworth got thedossier, and after Denis O’Brien had hiredprivate investigators, O’Brien says he re-ceived the memory stick anonymously. Thememory stick contained the same files as inthe Dropbox dossier.

“I received an envelope anonymously,”said the businessman. “I do not know whosent me this envelope.”

AntonPillarorderDenis O’Brien’s Singapore affidavit, whichgave his Maltese address as his home,formed the core of his October 13th bid inthe High Court to seek an Anton Pillar or-der – effectively a civil law search and seize

warrant. Failure to comply leaves the per-son against whom such an order is made incontempt of court.

The High Court refused this fromO’Brien, granting him instead an orderthat seeks to preserve intact the evidence –the dossier – he argues will prove his con-spiracy case.

O’Brien’s contention of a conspiracy wasfuelled by events last May and June, whenRTÉ’s David Murphy received documentsfrom a trusted source allegedly detailing as-pects of the businessman’s arrangementswith the Irish Bank Resolution Corpora-tion (IBRC), the successor bank to AngloIrish that the Government put into liquida-tion in February.

They concerned O’Brien’s contention ofa verbal agreement to extend payback timeon loans and the rates of interest to becharged by the bank.

Asked to comment by RTÉ, O’Brien re-acted by obtaining an injunction gaggingthe broadcaster. A few days later, however,speaking with the protection of Dáil privi-lege, Catherine Murphy TD revealed someof the details.

O’Brien responded by threatening legalaction against media outlets publishing re-ports of her remarks. The Irish Times waswarned by O’Brien’s solicitors William Fryto remove a report from its website or facethe consequences.

The injunction against RTÉ was clari-fied shortly afterwards by the judge, whosaid the original order had not been intend-ed to restrict Oireachtas reporting.

However, O’Brien has initiated a sepa-rate legal action against the Dáil Commit-tee on Procedures and Privileges because itrefused to sanction Catherine Murphy and,as O’Brien sees it, uphold his constitutionalright to a good name.

In the wake of these controversies, sever-

al players in the drama began to receiveemails in late July from Mark Hollings-worth, who said he was writing a storyabout O’Brien for The Sunday Times maga-zine. The newspaper has since said Holl-ingsworth was not working for it.

David Murphy consulted his boss, KevinBakhurst, RTÉ’s head of news and currentaffairs and deputy director general, whotold him he could engage with Hollings-worth but only on information that was al-ready in the public domain.

Murphy in due course spoke to Hollings-worth by telephone for about 30 minutes.RTÉ sources say the conversation was as ex-pected between two journalists until thepoint when Hollingsworth asked for accessto the source for Murphy’s IBRC informa-tion. Murphy refused.

Other people approached by Hollings-worth in July included Rory Godson, a PRconsultant and former Sunday Times busi-ness editor; Catherine Murphy’s communi-cations adviser, Ann-Marie McNally; Lucin-da Creighton and several other journalists.

After the summer, Hollingsworth fol-lowed up his earlier approaches by tellingpeople he was coming to Dublin, which hedid on September 7th and 8th.

RTÉ sources say he met David Murphyfor coffee in Fixx, a cafe at the corner ofDawson Street and Molesworth Street andagain, Hollingsworth sought access tosources. During a lunch in the Voila Cafe onLower Baggot Street, Hollingsworth toldthe Renua TD Lucinda Creighton he wasdoing “a big, big splash on Denis” for TheSunday Times. Some days later, Creightonthought it odd when she met a SundayTimes journalist on an unrelated matteronly to discover the journalist said sheknew nothing about a “big, big splash” onO’Brien.

But Hollingsworth’s September visit to

Dublin was not all wasted as he obtainedthe Red Flag dossier of newspaper cuttingsand profile-cum-assessment material onO’Brien. By October 9th, the memory stickcontaining the dossier was with Espion andnames were emerging. They included AlanHynes, parliamentary assistant of ColmKeaveney, the Fianna Fáil TD for GalwayEast, who made comments in the Dáil onJune 9th.

In his speech, Keaveney characterisedO’Brien as obtaining favours from the gov-ernment and being “enriched” by govern-ment decisions. He spoke of criminalityand corruption in relation to O’Brien andasked why the Garda Síochána had not in-vestigated the findings of the Moriarty tri-bunal.

Forensic analysis of metadata suggestedKeaveney’s speech had been edited by KarlBrophy and Séamus Conboy. In fact, Keav-eney’s Dáil speech was not the edited ver-sion on the memory stick; the TD has saidthe speech delivered was authored whollyby himself.

Other names to emerge included Brid

Murphy and Kevin Hiney, both, like Bro-phy and Conboy, employees of Red Flag.

Espion’s analyst, Dr Damir Kahvedzic,suggested that for a full forensic investiga-tion of who wrote or edited the documentson the memory stick, and with whom theywere shared, access would be needed to allcomputers, phones and memory storagesystems connected to the documents.

Espion’s report was with O’Brien on Oc-tober 12th. The next day in Singapore, heswore his affidavit.

“Having considered the contents of thememory stick, I was shocked as they weresimply extraordinary. It is clear to me thatthis is part of a campaign to undermine me,which has been on going for some time andwhich is calculated to cause me maximumdamage,” he swore.

The “three most crucial documents” arethose profiling his career, his IPO experi-ence and the Moriarty tribunal’s findings.

Quoting these, O’Brien identifies “themost egregious” of the “highly defamatoryand entirely false” allegations against himto be as follows: that “a government minis-ter ‘helped secure a state contract’ for me”;that “I ‘stopped the presses to alter a newsreport’”; that “I had gotten journalists firedfrom their jobs”; that “I was given ‘hugewritedowns on debts owed to a Statebank’”; that “I use philanthropy as ‘a PRtool’”; and that “I had ‘tried to silence theIrish parliament’”.

“I deny each and every one of these alle-gations,” says the affidavit.

The affidavit claims “defamatory innuen-do” in the assertion that Digicel, O’Brien’smobile phone company which operates inCentral America and the Caribbean, includ-ing Jamaica and Haiti, “targeted poor coun-tries with even poorer governments”.

“Such statements amount to allegationsof unethical behaviour and potentiallycriminal wrongdoing, which I say and be-lieve are severely defamatory,” saysO’Brien, who also rejects a claim in the doc-uments that he is “only in favour of [my]own speech being free”.

On the Moriarty tribunal, O’Brien as-serts in his affidavit that, in documents onthe memory stick, “I am accused of perjur-ing myself by providing ‘false testimonyand falsifying documents’”. He says this is“mild” compared to the claim, which hesays is in the documents, that the awardingof the licence was “in monetary terms, thelargest single act of public corruption inthe history of the State” and that it was “un-doubtedly criminal”.

Elsewhere, the affidavit rejects “unsub-stantiated assertions” about “substantialdebt writedowns” by IBRC, which is de-scribed in one of the documents as “a subsi-dy from the Irish State for one of Ireland’srichest men”.

He rejects also that he received “unwar-ranted debt writedowns and/or went on toreceive corruptly awarded State contracts”in relation to his purchase of Siteserv, To-paz and Ocean Blue.

O’Brien describes the Keaveney speech,“which went on to be delivered in Dáil Éire-ann” as defamatory and written with the in-tention that it was delivered with the pro-tection of parliamentary privilege.

There is “a clear possibility”, O’Brien’saffidavits swears, that the dossier was pre-pared to damage the stock market flotationof Digicel, through which he hoped to raisesome $2 billion but which he aborted on Oc-tober 6th.

The High Court battle about the RedFlag files resumes today, when O’Brien’slawyers are expected to seek access to all in-ternet search and download history for allcomputer equipment in Red Flag and all re-lated metadata.

If the action proceeds to a full hearing –that is, an examination of any evidence sug-gesting an alleged conspiracy – much thatDenis O’Brien has sought to keep out of thepublic domain, or consigned to fading mem-ory, is likely to be put under the spotlight.

That would include his banking arrange-ments with IBRC and the findings of the Mo-riarty tribunal, which concluded that “Mi-chael Lowry, in the course of his ministeri-al office, as Minister for Transport, Energyand Communications, by his acts and deci-sions, [had] conferred a benefit on Mr Den-is O’Brien, a person who made payments toMr Lowry”.

ClaimofgrudgeThe O’Brien affidavit is candid in acknowl-edging what he himself describes as thestrained personal history between himself,Gavin O’Reilly and Karl Brophy.

“The Second, Third and Fourth NamedDefendants – (Karl Brophy, Séamus Con-boy and Gavin O’Reilly) – are aggrieved byme and have a grudge against me,”the affi-davit reads.

“It was calculated to cause damage to mybusiness at a time when I was conductingan IPO and intended to float my businesson the New York Stock Exchange. I believethat the contents of the memory stick orlike information has been circulating in re-lation to me for some time, and certainlysome of the contents of the memory stickhave been disseminated in the last 12months,” the billionaire goes on.

Describing the dossier as being part ofsomething clandestine and “shrouded inunfairness and dishonesty”, O’Brien says itwas prepared with a view to advancingsomebody’s interest. “The question is:whose interest?”

Similar attention will be focused on thememory stick – now in the safe keeping, byorder of the High Court, of O’Brien’s solici-tors, Eames. Who copied files on to it andwhen?

DenisO’Brien’saffidavitseveraltimesmentionsthestockmarketflotationofDigicel,hisCaribbean-centredmobilephoneserviceprovider,fromwhichhehadhopedtoraise$2billion.

However,themuch-heraldedIPO,whichO’Brienhad hopedtopricebetween$13and$16ashare,wasabortedonOctober6th,lessthan72hoursbeforeitwasduetohappen.

O’Brien’saffidavitsaystheIPOwas“suspendedforexternalmarketreasons”.Marketsourcesindicatedaninvestorwillingnesstopayonlybetween$9and$11ashare,

considerablybelowthehoped-forprice.

Theaffidavitcontinues:“WhileIamawareofnospecificintentiononthepartofanyspecificpersoninthisregard,thedatesofauthorshipandcompilationofthe[memorystick]documentsdemonstrateaclearpossibilitythattheDossiercouldhavebeencompiledforthepurposeofpreventingafavourableoutcometothisprocess.InfacttheProspectusfortheIPOformspartoftheDossiercomplainedofandisasinistermatterforwhichIsayIamentitledtomakefurtherinquiriesandtoseekanexplana-

tionastowhomthiswasdistributedtobytheFirstNamedDefendant[RedFlagConsulting],itsagentsorservants.”

Digicel,whichisfacingever-growingcompetitionintheCaribbeanfromCable&

Wireless(CWC),iscarryingabout$6.5billionindebtandneedstoinvestinhigh-speedfibre,fixed-lineandcableTVservices.

Furthermore,CWCisonthevergeofbeingboughtoutbyJohnMaloneofLibertyGlobal,oneoftherichestmenintheworld,makingitpotentiallyanevenstrongercompetitorforDigicel.

TheDigicelIPOneededapprovalfromtheUSSecuritiesandExchangeCommission(SEC),theUSfederalgovern-mentauthoritythatseekstoprotectinvestorsbyensuringUSstockmarketsobeythelaw.

Panelstory

CWC is on theverge of being

bought out by JohnMalone of LibertyGlobal, one of theworld’s richestmen

DenisO’BrienandtheRedFlagcontroversy

‘‘

PeterMurtagh

O’Brien’sbattle continuesasheseeks full access toRedFlag’swebsearchanddownloadhistory

Home News

O’Brien affidavit says ‘sinister’ dossier couldhave been compiled to affect Digicel IPO

Theonlypersonknowntohaveobtainedaccess to thedossieroutsideRedFlag,prior toO’Brienreceivingacopy, is freelance journalistMarkHollingsworth‘‘

■Denis O’Brien: “It is clear tome thatthis is part of a campaign to undermineme . . .” Below: (left) UK-based freelancejournalistMark Hollingsworth; GavinO’Reilly, former chief executive of INM;andKarl Brophy, chief executive of RedFlag and a former executive of INM.

The billionaire, the memory stickand a claim of conspiracy to defame

TheO’Brienaffidavit iscandid inacknowledgingwhathedescribesas thestrainedpersonalhistorybetweenhimself,GavinO’ReillyandKarlBrophy‘‘

THE IRISH TIMESTuesday, October 27 , 2015 7

Outgoing(Total seats 166)

Predicted(Total seats 158)

Can you correctly predict the number of seats eachparty or grouping will get in the general election?

The prize for the winning reader is a case of wine. In theevent of no correct response, the prize will go to, or bedivided amongst, those equally close to the result.

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GENERAL ELECTIONSWEEPSTAKE

Election2016

Fine Gael* 67

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Greens 0

Independents/Others 15

Independent Alliance 5

Vacant 1

*Including Ceann Comhairle

When Mr Justice Colm Mac Eochaidh ofthe High Court made an order in favour ofDenis O’Brien last October, the languagehe used left little apparent room for ambi-guity.

“And so,” he said having laid the build-ing blocks of law and logic, “in respect ofthe memory stick, I direct that it be giveninto the safekeeping of the plaintiff solici-tor, to hold until further order, and that ofcourse that there be no interference withthe memory stick at all by anybody; it justbe held on behalf of the litigation by your so-licitor,” he said looking at Michael Cush,O’Brien’s barrister.

“Is it sufficient I make that order on aforthwith basis?” asked Mac Eochaidh. Tolawyers, forthwith means “without delay”or “immediately” or, in simple terms,“now”.

“Certainly, Judge,” said Cush. “No diffi-culty with that.”

But that is not what happened.On December 21st 2015, the court heard

that after the judge made his October 16thorder, several files on the memory stickwere altered and deleted.

Yesterday, there was further evidencethat the stick, whose origin is unknown butwhich is central to O’Brien’s assertions ofan illegal conspiracy against him, was out-side the jurisdiction even as Mac Eochaidhwas making his order – and that it re-mained abroad for a further 10 days afterthe High Court edict that it should be re-tained for safe-keeping by O’Brien’s solici-tor in Dublin.

In this latest twist to the case of DenisO’Brien versus Red Flag Consulting, thesaga bounces between Dublin, Hong Kong,Rotterdam and Riga.

O’Brien’s case against Red Flag is thatthe PR company, chaired by Gavin O’Reil-ly, a former chief executive at IndependentNewspapers during O’Brien’s hard-foughtbattle to wrest control from O’Reilly’s fa-ther, Tony O’Reilly, is orchestrating an ille-gal conspiracy to defame him and damagehis business interests. Red Flag denies thecharge.

O’Brien’s lawyers initiated his action onOctober 13th last, seeking a civil search andseize order called an Anton Piller Order.They also sought a so-called superinjunc-tion preventing any public disclosure oftheir action.

The High Court refused to grant the rare-ly used orders. Instead, the judge opted for,in effect, a freezing order. On October 16th,Mr Justice Mac Eochaidh followed this bygranting a forensic imaging order so thatthe evidence O’Brien regarded as provinghis case was preserved.

While details of O’Brien’s version ofevents leading to his action have changed

since he swore his first affidavit on October13th last, his core accusation has remainedconsistent.

The USB memory stick, he says, was sentto him, anonymously, at his Dublin office inGrand Canal Quay, arriving on October8th. He had the stick examined by experts;its contents “were simply extraordinary”,the businessman swore in his first affidavit.

It emerged subsequently that the memo-ry stick, a SanDisk Cruzer Edge USB whichwas password protected, contained 339digital files – Microsoft Word documentsand PDFs in the main – in 40 digital folders.It is not known if the USB stick had beenused prior to the files and folders at the cen-tre of the case being copied on to it.

ThedossierThe dossier was created by Red Flag, on be-half of a client, which the consultancy hasso far resisted naming, despite O’Brien’sbest efforts. However, its files were shared,via Dropbox, with Mark Hollingsworthwho was purporting to be acting for theSunday Times but from whom the newspa-per has since distanced itself.

Most of it amounted to newspaper cut-tings, along with a number of analyses ofO’Brien’s career, entitled “Who is DenisO’Brien?”, “Denis O’Brien IPO Experi-ence”, and “The Moriarty Tribunal Ex-plainer”.

By the following day, the disk was withEspion, digital forensic analysts based inSandyford, Co Dublin. On October 12th, itreported back to O’Brien.

In court the following day, Wednesday,

October 14th, lawyers for Red Flag ex-pressed concern as to how O’Brien had ob-tained the USB and they sought access to it,having engaged their own forensic experts,Stroz Friedberg, a large company with of-fices across the US Europe and Asia, andwho number among their analysts severalexperts recruited from Britain’s intelli-gence services.

The judge said he would make a ruling intwo days’ time. However, between thatstatement being made by him in court onthe 14th and his ruling being delivered onthe 16th, the USB stick was taken out of Ire-land.

Digitpol, a cybersecurity firm run fromHong Kong by an Irish man, Martin Coyne,specialises in unscrambling digital evi-dence after car crashes.

Its clients include Humberside Police;VbV, the Dutch bureau of vehicle insur-ance crime; and RDW, the Dutch driving li-censing authority.

Coyne has worked as head of technicaldevelopments at the operational supportunit of the Rotterdam-Rijnmond Policeand describes himself as an expert in foren-sic computing and cybercrime investiga-tion.

The USB stick was given to Digitpol onOctober 14th as lawyers were arguing inthe Four Courts, by O’Brien’s solicitors,Eames Solicitors, just around the corneron Bow Street – much to the alarm of RedFlag defendants who remained in the darkuntil January 20th, 2016.

O’Brien had already retained Espion,which has ISO 27001 certification, the in-dustry benchmark for expertise in digitalsecurity and systems management.

In his affidavit, which emerged duringyesterday’s proceedings, Red Flag chief op-erating officer Garret Doyle said there was“no explanation” from O’Brien on why heneeded to hire Digitpol when he had al-ready hired “one of the best known andmost respected information technologyfirms in the country”.

Coyne was in Dublin on October 15thspeaking at an Insurance Ireland confer-ence in Croke Park, where at 10am he gavea presentation on the use of technology inextracting electronic data from crashed ve-hicles.

According to a report attached to an affi-davit, the seventh by Eames solicitor Diar-muid O’Comhain, Digitpol “was en-gaged. . . to undertake an analysis of theUSB stick”.

That analysis was done not in HongKong but in the Netherlands, which iswhere Coyne brought the USB stick, arriv-ing in Amsterdam later on October 15th af-ter his Croke Park presentation.

Coyne brought the USB stick with him,underlining the care he took by later tellingO’Brien’s solicitor that he carried it in a far-aday bag. This is a soft pouch made of lay-

ered conductive mesh, nylon and polyure-thane and which is favoured by police andintelligence agents because it protects digi-tal information being attacked by remotewiping devices or bugs, and also shields itfrom tracking devises.

In his report for Eames Solicitors, Coynementions Digitpol offices in Barendtecht, adistrict south of Schiedamsedijk and Rot-terdam city centre, but gives no address.

Inside Digitpol’s Dutch offices, there isan RFID safe, which may be opened andclosed only with a small fob, similar to thekeys used by cars and electronically-operat-ed gates, or a swipe card similar to a bankcard.

Digitpol’s RFID safe kept a log of when itwas opened, and by whom. For extra securi-ty, “access to the safe is only granted digital-

ly with the presence of two persons, one ofwhom needs to have senior managementcontrol access permissions”, as Coyne putit in a report to Eames, dated January 21st,2016.

According to the log, the UBS stick wasput into the safe at 1405 on October 15th byan “R Smit”.

The following day in Dublin, Mr JusticeColm Mac Eochaidh ordered that the USBstick be held only by Eames Solicitors andnot interfered with “at all by anybody”.Two days later in Rotterdam on October18th, Martin Coyne took the stick from hisspecial safe just after noon, his associate, RSmit, returning it at 2am on the 19th.

And so it continued over several days,the USB was taken in and out of the safe, itsmovement being recorded by the safe’s ac-

cess log.Digitpol’s January 21st report to

O’Brien’s solicitors, which was detailed yes-terday in the High Court, reveals no instruc-tion from them to have the stick returnedto Dublin in compliance with the HighCourt order of October 16th.

Instead, according to Digitpol’s recordof who operated the safe, described as “ac-cess log to vault”, Coyne removed the stickfrom the safe on October 23rd at 0601, re-turning it later that day at 1630.

He had it again the next day, October24th, again at 0601 precisely, returning itto the safe at 2100. He had it out again onthe 25th, this time at 0605, putting it backin at 1700.

FinalremovalThe final removal of the stick from the safewas on October 26th, this time by a D Pint-er. It was returned to Eames Solicitors inDublin later that day.

Coyne’s account of his accessing the safein Rotterdam between October 23rd andOctober 24th is interesting because on Oc-tober 23rd, he attended and made a presen-tation to a training seminar – 1,880kmaway in Riga, Latvia.

The seminar was hosted by the Europe-an branch of the International Associationof Auto Theft Investigators and Coynetalked about Cube, a crime investigationproject set up in 2009 by the Rotterdam Po-lice, co-funded by the Netherlands minis-try of justice.

While the section of Digitpol’s websitedetailing company news has ceased to existin recent days, confirmation that Coynewas indeed in Riga may be had from readilyavailable online photographs of him at theseminar.

As revealed yesterday in the High Court,Coyne filed an amended report to Eameson Tuesday of this week in which the “ac-cess log to vault” was changed.

No longer does it show Coyne openingand closing the RFID safe on October 23rdand 24th. Now, the record shows that it wasSmit who removed and put back the USBon those dates and the initial arrival of thestick in the safe on October 15th had alsochanged.

It was not, after all, there at 1405. It ar-rived at 1800. The significance of thischange is unclear.

Digitpol’s report of its work on the USBstick concludes with an assertion that “itwas not part of Digitpol’s instruction or in-tention to interfere with the USB stick”.

It says: “Any interference has had no ma-terial impact on the USB stick nor on thedocuments contained within the encryptedcylinder and that comprise the Dossier.”

The experts at Stroz Friedberg beg to dif-fer. Stroz has a track record when it comesto data deletion and retrieval. In the News

of the World phone hacking scandal andsubsequent investigation, Stroz recon-structed several years of emails that hadbeen deleted from an account of Mur-doch’s former editor and chief executiveRebekah Brooks.

A report by Stroz, dated January 27thand detailed yesterday in the High Court,notes that both Denis O’Brien’s sets of ex-perts, Espion and Digitpol, “have con-firmed that significant changes were madeto the USB drive due to a failure to followbest practice”.

Stroz continues: “As a result of the nu-merous changes and additions of data tothe USB drive, key forensic artefacts mayhave been destroyed.”

Stroz concludes: “It is now impossible torecover the USB device to its original condi-tion, or to know exactly what data mayhave been modified or lost.”

But O’Brien’s side would have knownthis because their own experts, Espion,told them the same – on October 15th, theday the USB stick was given to MartinCoyne by Eames Solicitors, and taken outof Ireland.

Prompted by questioning from RedFlag, on that day an Espion expert, DamirKahvedzic, filed an affidavit throughEames Solicitors to which, as exhibit01/DK/01, was attached a supplementaryEspion report to the company’s original re-port that underpinned O’Brien’s initiationof the case.

“If a forensic deletion of data is per-formed then it may be impossible to recov-er or detect the data deleted,” said the Espi-on supplementary report. “It is relativelyeasy to perform a forensic deletion and free-ly available software and guides can enableany individual with basic IT knowledge tocarry out such forensic deletions that maynot be detectable.”

The report said also that where a file hasbeen modified, “for most file types the pre-vious version of the data is not recoverableonce a change has been made and the filesaved”.

The suggestion that data critical toO’Brien’s case was interfered with was de-scribed yesterday as “outrageous” by hisbarrister, Martin Hayden. The “encryptedchamber” of the USB stick had “not been inany way accessed or interfered with”, he as-serted.

However, in his affidavit, Garret Doyle isblunt in its criticism of O’Brien and Eames,his solicitors. Doyle accuses them of failingto comply with Mac Eochaidh’s order of Oc-tober 16th at which juncture the USB stick“was being held out of the jurisdiction byan entity whose existence and involvementwas not disclosed. . . “

He continued: “Despite the clear inten-tion of the court, the memory stick was in-terfered with by both Espion and Digitpolon multiple occasions. . .”

Martin Coyne’saccount of his

accessing the safe inRotterdambetweenOctober 23rd and 24th isinteresting because on the23rd, he attended andmade a presentation to atraining seminar –1,880kmaway in Latvia

MARYCAROLAN

Red Flag Consulting has toldthe High Court it has concernsrelating to custody of a USBcomputer memory stick at theheart of businessman DenisO’Brien’s legal action againstthe firm.

The stick contains a dossierof material about the business-man which, he alleges, evidenc-es a conspiracy to damage him.The stick was in the offices ofDigitpol, a firm in Rotterdam,for 10 days after the court or-dered on October 16th last it behanded over “forthwith” to so-licitors for Mr O’Brien to beheld without interference pend-ing further court orders, Mau-rice Collins SC, for Red Flag,

said.Martin Hayden SC, for Mr

O’Brien, said there had been noaccess to, or interferencewith, the encrypted chamberof the USB stick containing thedossier. Digitpol had the stickfor analysis purposes and whatwas being suggested by RedFlag was “outrageous”.

Mr O’Brien initiated his casein October after the USB stickwas sent anonymously in an en-velope to his Dublin office. Healleges conspiracy and defama-tion against Red Flag and someof its executives and staff.

A hearing date has yet to befixed and the case was beforeMr Justice Colm Mac Eochaidhyesterday for case manage-ment purposes.

Mr Collins said his side isvery concerned about issuesconcerning custody of the USBstick.

Red Flag was unaware thestick was with Digitpol in Rot-terdam until October 26th andwas informed on October 29thit was in the custody of MrO’Brien’s solicitors without be-ing told it had only come intotheir possession.

Whatever Digitpol was doingwith the stick “remains a com-plete mystery to us”, he said.His side was also cocerned whatwas happening when the stickwas surrendered to another dig-ital forensic firm, Espion, in thesolicitors’ offices.

There were other mattersleading to a report from digitalforensic experts for his side,counsel added. His side was con-cerned there appeared to havebeen disregard of the court’s Oc-tober 16th order, he said. Theyhad received two reports fromthe other side, one of which

completely changed the timingin the other relating to whensome people had access to thestick and this was all in a con-text where the court had direct-ed there should be no interfer-ence with the stick, he added.

Mr Hayden said he took issuewith the “outrageous” waythese matters were beingraised and the “emotive lan-

guage” used. There had beenno access to or interferencewith the encrypted chamber ofthe USB stick which containedthe dossier and Digitpol had thestick for analysis purposes, hesaid.

The reports Mr Collins re-

ferred to involved changes ofjust four words relating to iden-tities of people who had accessto the stick at particular timesfor the purpose of reports, hesaid.

His side’s experts had exam-ined the stick, a protoocl relat-ing to memory analysis waspart of that process. The exami-nation left a “shadow” whichwas “being converted into us al-tering it”, counsel said.

There was no interferencewith the encrypted barrel con-taining the dossier and RedFlag was told any interactionwith the USB stick had no im-pact on the dossier documents.If the Red Flag side was con-tending there was a breach ofthe High Court order, it shouldbring an application in that re-gard but had not, he said.

Mr Collins said his side hadwanted to give the other side anopportunity to address RedFlag’s concerns in detailed affi-davits. Mr Justice Mac Eo-

chaidh noted his October orderdirected the stick be handedover “forthwith” and gave MrO’Brien’s side two weeks to pro-vide a comprehensive affidavitaddressing the issues raised.

Earlier, the judge heard thesides had agreed a timeline forexchange of legal documentsnecessary for the full hearing ofthe case.

Mr Hayden also said his sidehad raised issues whether cer-tain notifications were sent toa gmail address of a Red Flagstaff member and that re-mained a “live” issue. Mr Col-lins said that issue was “a puresmokescreen”.

Red Flag has told the court ithad a client for the dossier but itis entitled not to reveal that cli-ent’s identity. It also raised is-sues about how its materialcame into the possession of MrO’Brien. The High Court latelast year refused to grant an or-der requiring Red Flag to imme-diately identify its client.

‘‘The strange case of Denis O’Brien, thememory stick and a Rotterdam safe

The dossierwas createdby Red Flag,on behalf ofa client,which theconsultancyhas so farresistednaming,despiteO’Brien’sbest efforts

■Mr JusticeMac Eochaidh:gave DenisO’Brien’s sidetwoweeks toprovide affidavit

Home News

Yesterday, therewasfurtherevidencethat theUSBstick,whoseorigin isunknownbutwhichis central toO’Brien’s assertionsof an illegalconspiracyagainsthim,wasoutside thejurisdictionevenasMrJusticeMacEochaidhwasmakinghisorder

■Denis O’Brien: his caseagainst Red Flag is that the PRcompany is orchestrating anillegal conspiracy to defamehim and damage his businessinterests. Red Flag denies thecharge.

‘‘

PeterMurtagh

TheUSBstick,which iscentral toO’Brien’s case,was referred toagain in theHighCourt yesterday

‘‘

CourthearsofconcernsovercustodyofUSBstickStickwas inNetherlands for 10daysaftercourtordered it behandedover ‘forthwith’

4 THE IRISH TIMESSaturday, February 6 , 2016

R2

It is exceptionallypatronisingto rewardsomeonefor notexcellingLauraKennedy

Former JJ72 bassplayerHilaryWoods goes soloTony Clayton-Lea

LifeFriday

Fantasyfigures?Making senseof our GDPstatistics

BusinessThisWeek

PETERMURTAGH

Mark Hollingsworth, the onlyperson known to have obtainedthe dossier of documents at theheart of Denis O’Brien’s legalaction against Dublin PR firmRed Flag, did so while he wasworking with a London-basedprivate intelligence-gatheringcompany.

In the summer and early au-tumn of 2015, Mr Hollings-worth interviewed a number ofpoliticians, political advisers

and journalists in Dublin, tell-ing them all that he was writingan article about Mr O’Brien forthe Sunday Times.

However, The Irish Timeshas established that, at thistime, Mr Hollingsworth wasworking in concert with thebusiness intelligence companyAlaco, with whom he has had along-standing relationship.

None of the people he inter-viewed, by telephone and emailduring the summer of 2015,and in person when in Dublin

on September 7th and 8th, in-cluding Catherine Murphy TDinside Leinster House, knew ofthese links.

FreelancejournalistMr Hollingsworth has workedas an author and freelance jour-nalist for several other outlets,including the Guardian, the(London) Evening Standardand the Daily Mail.

Everyone Mr Hollingsworthcontacted in Ireland last yearbecame suspicious due to his

persistent efforts to identifysources of leaks about MrO’Brien and his banking ar-rangements with IBRC, whilepurportedly writing a profile onhim.

However, as a result of MrHollingsworth’s inquiries, RedFlag shared with him a dossierit had assembled, containing339 files, almost all of them pre-viously published articles aboutMr O’Brien, as well as several bi-ographical accounts of MrO’Brien’s life and the adverse

comments made about him bythe Moriarty tribunal. The dos-sier also included a copy of adraft speech similar to onemade in the Dáil by former Fian-na Fáil TD Colm Keaveney.

Mr Hollingsworth has toldseveral people that after he gotthe dossier, he gave it to Alaco,although it is unclear whetherhe did so directly or through anintermediary, due to the vary-ing accounts he has offered.

Earlier this month, The IrishTimes submitted a series of de-

tailed questions to Alaco askingthem about their relationshipwith Mr Hollingsworth andtheir interest in Mr O’Brien. Todate, no response has been re-ceived.

Dossier’scontentsThe contents of the dossier areunderstood to be identical tothose on a USB memory stickwhich Mr O’Brien has sworn inan affidavit arrived unexpected-ly in his Dublin office in early Oc-tober 2015.

He was, he said in his affida-vit, “shocked” and describedthe contents of the USB stick as“simply extraordinary”,prompting his legal actionagainst Red Flag.

In the High Court this week,Mr O’Brien’s request for a dis-covery order against Red Flagwas adjourned. Next week, thecourt will hear an applicationfrom him for discovery againstDropbox, the service throughwhich Red Flag gave Mr Holl-ingsworth access to the dossier.

SportsFriday

Home 2-8. World 9-11. Life 12-13. Opinion 14. Letters 15. Crosswords 23.

Warm,humidandmostlydrywithsomebrightorsunnyspells.Mod-eratetofreshsouthwesterlywinds.Highsof17-23degrees.

ELAINEEDWARDSandCOLINGLEESON

There are almost 260,000 va-cant homes across the coun-try, preliminary figures fromthe latest census show,prompting campaigners andhousing experts to call for ur-gent action to address theState’s “dysfunctional” hous-ing system.

The census found there arealmost 260,000 vacant homesin the State – 61,204 of whichare vacant holiday homes – ata time when homeless familiesare having to be accommodat-ed in hotel and B&B type ac-commodation.

Dr Lorcan Sirr, lecturer inhousing studies and urban eco-nomics at the Dublin Instituteof Technology, said that whenholiday homes were taken outof the figures, the 198,000 va-cant homes represented9.7 per cent of the total hous-ing stock. “The vacancy rate isroughly twice what it shouldbe,” he said.

RegionalvariationsVacancy rates for housingvary widely by county but theoverall rate stands at 12.8 percent. Total vacant dwellings inDublin, including holidayhomes, numbered more than36,000.

In Leinster vacant dwell-ings including holiday homesnumbered more than 90,000,for Munster there were morethan 83,000, for Connachtmore than 52,000 and parts ofUlster more than 33,000.

The Simon Community said

it was scandalous that thereare 198,358 vacant units whenwe are experiencing the worsthousing and homeless crisis.

“There are at least 100,000people on the social housingwaiting list. Clearly havingmore effective housing stockmanagement across the coun-try is a matter which must beaddressed urgently,” spokes-woman Niamh Randall said.

CallforactionThe homelessness charity Pe-ter McVerry Trust said theState must “urgently act” to ad-dress the volume of emptyproperties.

Spokesman Francis Do-herty said the number of va-cant properties was “unaccept-ably high” and underlined“just how dysfunctional ourhousing system has become”.

Dr Sirr said the fact the capi-tal had a vacancy rate of nearly10 per cent was “outrageous”.

“The other thing that’s anoutlier from the previous cen-sus is the rise of [short-term let-ting website] Airbnb. Theycan’t not have an impact,” hesaid.

Minister for Housing andPlanning Simon Coveney isdue to publish his Housing Ac-tion Plan on Tuesday, subjectto Cabinet approval.

A State fund to buy dis-tressed properties from banksand a pledge to build 45,000new social houses by 2021 areat the centre of the plan.

Beneath Boris’sbombastFor all hisblunders, the newforeign secretaryin Britain is athoughtful soulDenis StauntonPage 9

Weather HomeNews

Numberofvacanthouses‘scandalous’First census results fromApril revealalmost260,000unoccupiedproperties

Campaigners call forurgent action toaddress ‘dysfunctional’ housingsystem

O’Brien ‘profiler’workedforprivate investigationfirm

BusinessThisWeek

WorldNews

Datasecurity:Micro-soft won’t be forced toturn over emails storedin Ireland to the USgovernment for a druginvestigation, an ap-peals court has said.

THE TICKET

LARAMARLOWE

A truck rammed into the crowdwatching Bastille Day fire-works on the Promenade desAnglais last night injuring orkilling dozens of people in whatis believed to have been a terror-ist attack.

“Dear citizens of Nice, atruck seems to have killed doz-ens of people,” Christian Estro-si, the mayor of Nice, tweeted.“Stay in your homes for now.”

Sébastien Humbert, the dep-uty prefect of the Alpes-Mari-times department told BMF tel-evision that up to 30 people hadbeen killed.

The driver continued plough-ing over people for at least 100metres before he was shot deadby police. Tens of thousands ofpeople had assembled to watchthe fireworks, many of themwith their families. Witnessessaid it was a scene of carnage.

“People are running. It is pan-ic. He drove up on the Prome-nade and ran over every-one,” Damien Allemand, a jour-nalist from Nice Matin told the

Agence France Presse. “Thereare a lot of people bleeding,probably lots of wounded.”

Mr Allemand said a whitetruck drove up onto the pave-ment and into the crowd. Gun-fire broke out, though it was notimmediately clear whether theshooting was done by police oraccomplices of the truck driver.The prefecture of the

Alpes-Maritimes departmentsaid it was a terrorist attack.

The attack occurred at about11pm. Within 20 minutes, a se-curity area had been cordonedoff around the Place Masséna.

We are dealing with a

large-scale event,” Mr Hum-bert said. “All government ser-vices have been mobilised.”

The emergency departmentat the Hôpital Saint Roch wasoverwhelmed.

A woman working at a cafétold BFM: “I was serving cli-ents. Everyone started runningonto the beach, into buildings,trying to hide. There was a lot ofshooting. People hit theground. They were terrified.

Wassim Bouhlel, a Nice resi-dent who spoke near Nice’sPromenade du Paillon lastnight, said he saw a lorry driveinto the crowd and the manthen emerged with a gun andstarted shooting.

“There was carnage on theroad,” Mr Bouhlel said. “Bodieseverywhere.”

Almost exactly eight monthsago Islamic State militantskilled 130 people on a Fridaynight in Paris in November.

The Department of ForeignAffairs was contacting consularservices in France to ascertainwhether any Irish were caughtup in the incident.

Sports

THEIRISHTIMES24-28TaraStreet,Dublin2.D02CX89Telephone: (01)6758000Fax:Newsdesk6758036.Sport6758033.Business6758048.Advertising6758002.Online: irishtimes.comTherecommendedretailpriceofTHEIRISHTIMESintheRepublicof Irelandis¤2.00Subscriptions:Tel:6758894;Fax:6758077Email:subscribe@irishtimes.com Banks:Bank of Ire-

land’s main union saysstaff have done theirpart to resolve the pen-sion scheme problems.

Soccer:St Patrick’s andCork City secured drawsin the first leg of thesecond qualifying roundof the Europa League.

TourdeFrance:ChrisFroome was creditedwith the same time astwo riders he was withprior to a crash whichforced him to run afterhis bike was damaged.

KENDRICK LAMAR’SWEST COASTREVIVAL

IRELAND’SGOING-OUTGUIDE

★

Nice:Dozensdeadaftertruckdrivesintocrowd

■ An injured individual is seen on the ground after a truckmounted the kerb and struck peoplecelebrating Bastille Day in the southern French city of Nice. Dozens of peoplewere reportedkilled andmanymore injured. PHOTOGRAPH: ERIC GAILLARD/REUTERS

People arerunning. It is

panic. He drove upon the Promenadeand ran overeveryoneEyewitness DamienAllemand

Census 2016 reports:pages 2&3: Editorialcomment: page15

Console:A provisionalliquidator has beenappointed to the charityafter the court heard it is¤294,000 in debt andunable to maintain itsservice: page 6

Murdertrial:A womanaccused of murderingher colleague told gardaíhe was dead because ofhis love for her: page 4

US:Indiana governorMike Pence is DonaldTrump’s vice-presiden-tial pick, several mediaoutlets reported, thoughnot yet verified by theTrump camp: page 11

OpenseasonMickelson’s 63 sets pace

‘‘

THE IRISH TIMESirishtimes.com

Friday,July15,2016¤2.00(incl.VAT)£1.30NorthernIreland.

Vol.No.50147. Friday,July 15, 2016

For many years, Mark Hollings-worth has used his role as a jour-nalist and author to spy on peo-ple and inveigle informationuseful to his wealthy clients.Hollingsworth is the only per-

son known to have obtained directly fromRed Flag Consulting the dossier at theheart of Denis O’Brien’s legal actionagainst the company. An examination ofhis career and modus operandi illustrateshow he operates.

When he came to Dublin in 2015 askingpeople about O’Brien, zoning in on thebusinessman’s critics and seeking to identi-fy their sources of information, he didn’ttell anyone that he was working with a cor-porate intelligence company. Instead, Hol-lingsworth said he was working for the Sun-day Times but that newspaper has since ef-fectively disowned him.

Not long before he came to Dublin, Holl-ingsworth was paid £22,000 (¤26,000) byan intermediary acting for the Lon-don-based Irish developer Paddy McKil-len. A decade and a half before that, he re-ceived £10,000 from the UK-based Egyp-tian businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed.

Al-Fayed, then owner of Harrods depart-ment store, was grateful for the informa-tion he bought from Hollingsworth – infor-mation that gave him an insight into howhe was about to be cross-examined in acourt case.

But the Irish journalists and politiciansinterviewed last year by Hollingsworth, ei-ther on the phone or in person – and atleast one of them inside Leinster House, asconfirmed last week in the Dáil by SocialDemocrats TD Catherine Murphy – knewnothing of his past and his links to the richand powerful, let alone to a private spyingcompany.

To them, he was, at least initially, just an-other, slightly other-worldly and mildlyplummy, English journalist interested in,as he put it, an Irish oligarch.

In fact, Hollingsworth is at the nexus ofa group of people, some of whom, but notall, connected to Denis O’Brien, whose re-lationships and interests may converge ordiverge depending on the circumstances,but who are part of a background mosaicto one of the most unusual cases ever be-fore an Irish court.

Hollingsworth’s role is central to the le-gal action O’Brien has taken against theDublin headquartered PR firm Red Flag.His centrality is due to Hollingsworth be-ing the only person known to have ob-tained, directly from Red Flag, the body ofevidence that found its way to O’Brien.

It is this dossier, says O’Brien, thatprompted him last October to start his le-gal action against the company and namedemployees, seeking, but not getting, one ofthe most extreme tools available to a liti-gant – a civil law search warrant. Thiswould have allowed his agents to enter RedFlag’s offices and seize anything whichthey believed added weight to his accusa-tion that he was the victim of a criminalconspiracy, defamation and maliciousfalsehood.

Instead, O’Brien was granted an ordereffectively preserving evidence that mightsupport his claim of an illegal conspiracyagainst him and of defamation.

BenjitheBinmanIn explaining something of Mark Hollings-worth and how he operates, a good place tostart is with Benji the Binman.

Benji – whose real name is BenjaminPell – is part of the lore of Fleet Street; Brit-ain’s national newspaper industry. In the1990s, he made a living rummagingthrough the dustbins of the rich and fa-mous (and their lawyers), selling what hefound, often to tabloid newspapers.

Pell’s clients for the information he pro-cured from dustbins included News Inter-national (owners of the Sunday Times,among other titles) and Mirror GroupNewspapers. According to the Guardiannewspaper, the Sunday Times paid Pell£3,375 in April 1999 for information aboutJonathan Aitken (the former British Con-servative minister jailed that year for perju-ry); while the Mirror Group shelled out£1,435 in July 1999 for stories about TVpersonality Clive Anderson and formerSpice Girl Geri Halliwell.

The Guardian also reported, in July2000, that MI5, Britain’s internal securityservice, tipped off certain journalists and

editors that Pell had also been showing aninterest in rummaging through theirwaste.

Hollingsworth also had a fruitful rela-tionship with Benji the Binman.

In February 2000, the Mail on Sunday,describing Hollingsworth variously as an“associate” of Mohamed Al-Fayed and “afreelance writer with close links” to thebusinessman, revealed that he had beenable to do the Harrods owner a huge fa-vour – for which Hollingsworth said he waspaid £10,000.

At the time, Al-Fayed was being sued fordefamation by the former ConservativeParty junior minister Neil Hamilton,whose Westminster career came crashingdown in the so-called cash-for-questionsscandal. It was alleged that Hamilton, anda colleague, were paid by Al-Fayed to askparliamentary questions, the answers towhich were useful to him.

Hamilton’s litigation against Al-Fayedprompted Pell to rummage through thebins of lawyers advising the politician. Thepapers Pell thus acquired – scores of pag-es, wrote the Mail, revealing Hamilton’slawyers’ strategy for questioning Al-Fayed– found their way to Hollingsworth whopromptly sold them on to Al-Fayed.

Hollingsworth freely acknowledgedthat the legal waste papers he supplied toAl-Fayed had given the Harrods owner “abit of a steer” as to the line of questioninghe would face from Hamilton’s lawyers.

Hollingsworth claimed that he gave halfthe £10,000 to Pell. Pell moaned after-wards that he expected a further £5,000.Al-Fayed’s side denied the whole story,stating he never received any documentsimproperly.

Benji the Binman’s rummaging days areover now. He has been seen regularly inLondon’s Royal Courts of Justice, observ-ing libel trials and legal knowledge pro-pelled him into the role of media law quiz-master for the International Forum for Re-sponsible Media.

As an author, Hollingsworth has shownan attraction to money and the power thatit delivers. He has written eight books (sixof them co-authored) with titles such asAgainst The Odds – The Rise of Nigeria asAfrica’s Economic Superpower; London-grad – From Russia With Cash: The InsideStory of the Oligarchs; and Thatcher’s For-tunes – The Life and Times of Mark Thatch-er.

His penchant for merging freelance dig-ging on behalf of wealthy clients with ap-parent journalism and research for booksmay well have pre-dated his encounterwith Al-Fayed.

It certainly did not end there.

High-profilebattleBetween 2012 and the spring of 2015, Irishhotelier and developer Paddy McKillenwas involved in a high-profile battle withthe Barclay Brothers, the secretive Eng-lish media and retail twins Sir David Bar-clay and Sir Frederick Barclay. At issuewas control of three of London’s mostexclusive hotels, the Connaught inMayfair; the Berkeley in Kensing-ton; and, perhaps best known, Clar-idge’s also of Mayfair, in whichboth sides had ownership stakes.

To McKillen, the hotels were“jewels to be cherished”. Hehad little time for the BarclayBrothers whom he derided asmere “traders and philis-tines”.

As part of his efforts to fendthem off, McKillen drew around him-self a team of advisers and strategists.

The battle with the Barclays had overtand covert elements to it, including legaljousts in London’s high court; and intenselobbying, by both sides, of the Irish BankResolution Corporation (successor to An-glo Irish Bank); government officials andpoliticians in Dublin; as well as the use ofprivate investigators and corporate intelli-gence companies.

“Paddy, how can I put this, is a man ofkitchen cabinets. He doesn’t have an officereally,” said one source familiar with McK-illen’s methodology.

McKillen’s corps of trusted advisers andstrategists included Mike Aynsley. FromSeptember 2009 until February 2013,Aynsley was chief executive of Anglo andsubsequently of IBRC. Working with himon McKillen’s team was Richard Wood-house, Aynsley’s comrade-in-arms at both

banks, referred to affectionately by Ayns-ley as “Woody”.

Both men left IBRC together and, to-gether in London, they set up Prospera As-sociates, a Mayfair-based managementconsultancy that, according to itself, spe-cialises in distressed banks, corporate re-structuring and “particularly challengingsituations requiring absolute discretionand careful management”.

Woodhouse’s role in Anglo and IBRCwas specialised asset management, whichmeant managing major customers, amongthem McKillen and O’Brien. Anysley andO’Brien also developed a rapport that ex-tended to competitive slimming, each over-weight man trying to shed more poundsthan the other, with the loser donating tocharity.

During McKillen’s long battle with theBarclays, he and O’Brien met occasionallyin London and often dined together.

In October 2012, McKillen faced a prob-lem: the Barclay Brothers, having won a le-gal battle in the long war with McKillen,pressed for payment of costs amounting to£17.2 million. The Irish man turned forhelp to IBRC for a loan of £5 million.

The bank, in which, at that time, Ayns-ley and Woodhouse still worked, approvedemergency short-term funding and in theprocess, examined the commercial rela-tionship between McKillen and O’Brien,their assets and liabilities.

Because of an injunction granted to Mc-Killen and O’Brien by the High Court inDublin in March 2013, The Irish Times isunable to fully report on the nature of therelationship between the two men with re-gard to the loan application, other than toreport such a relationship existed, andthat the loan application was approved bythe bank.

However, in the Dáil last week, Cathe-rine Murphy said that O’Brien had offeredto go guarantor for the £5 million loan forMcKillen. In the event, however, McKillennever drew down the loan because, withindays of it being approved, he was able tomeet the costs shortfall in his BarclayBrothers case from the proceeds of thesale of property he owned on PlaceVendôme in Paris.

Controversy over

the loan has irked McKillen, who prideshimself on always paying his debts and al-ways having serviced his loans accordingto lending agreements.

Soon after leaving Dublin and setting upbusiness in London, Aynsley and Wood-house were assisting, among others, McKil-len.

Another Anglo man, Dublin solicitorAidan Eames, a member of the Fianna Fáilnational executive, appointed to the Angloboard in May 2010, also became part of Mc-Killen’s team fighting the Barclays.

CrisismanagementHelping McKillen with strategy was a com-pany named Project Associates, atough-minded London-based public rela-tions consultancy that specialises in repu-tation and crisis management. Key playersfrom Project included Rebecca Davies, a di-rector and chief operating officer at thecompany; Kate Miller, Project’s head ofcorporate and litigation practices, who ad-vises on protecting against damage reputa-tions and achieving strategic objectives;and account director Celine Cheung.

Among Woodhouse’s contributions toMcKillen’s side of the battle was his accessto the world of corporate intelligence-gath-ering. The former banker was sufficiently“in” with the London corporate intelli-gence-gathering set to be invited to partieshosted by Kroll, the market leaders whoseboast is “we replace uncertainty with an-swers”.

As one of McKillen’s team put it: “Basi-cally, Richard is a kind of wannabe spook;he just loves it, he just adores the intrigue”.

Woodhouse’s friends in London’s dense-ly populated business intelligence sectorinclude two directors at Alaco, a businessintelligence company founded by AmyLashinsky, formerly managing director ofKroll’s business intelligence unit. The twoare Adrian Stones, a former operative withMI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence gather-ing service; and Ambrose Carey, co-found-er of Alaco with Lashinsky.

Talking recently about Alaco’s opera-tions, Lashinsky remarked that the compa-ny often used what she described as “tamejournalists”.

One such example is Hollingsworthwho has a long-standing relationship withAlaco.

When McKillen’s team wanted to exam-ine what they hoped was a public relationsweakness for the Barclay Brothers (theirstanding among the community in theChannel Islands), Hollingsworth wasbrought in.

The publicity shy Barclays live on Brec-qhou, a tiny island they own off the coast ofSark, one of the Channel Islands. There,they have built a vast mock-gothic castle ofgranite, complete with battlements andturrets, two swimming pools and a helicop-ter pad.

The Channel Islands, while being in-tensely British in character, are self-gov-erning dependencies of the BritishCrown and are politically and legallysemi-detached from the UK itself.

Within the Channel Islands them-selves, Sark has jurisdiction over Brec-

qhou and many of Sark’s 600 or soresidents do not care for the BarclayBrothers and changes they haveproposed for Brecqhou.

As a result, there have been le-gal and political battles betweenthe brothers and residents over

how the Barclays run their affairson the smaller island, including a

proposal to make it independent of thelarger island with the aim, say critics, ofturning it into even more of an off-shoretax haven than the Channel Islands al-ready are.

When McKillen’s fight with the BarclayBrothers hit the headlines, Sark residents,among them several writers and journal-ists, approached his side offering storiesand insights about the brothers’ behaviourin the hope that McKillen’s difficultymight prove to be their opportunity.

As a result, over 100 testimonies aboutthe Barclays were gathered from island-ers. Hollingsworth never went to Sark buthe was involved, operating out of an officeat 35 Piccadilly, as he still does, and work-ing closely with Woodhouse.

It was a twin-pronged approach involv-ing both men and Alaco, with the parallelaim of probing the solvency of the Bar-clays.

A source close to the McKillen team ex-plained: “One of the things that we did, orone of his ideas actually that we helpedhim with, was to go on the offensive and re-ally scrutinise the Barclay Brothers’ finan-cial condition because lots of rumours hadbeen circulating for years that they were infact much less financially secure than theysay.

“Woodhouse in particular was going toreally drill down on the financial state-ments and sort of essentially come up witha story that they were on the brink of finan-cial collapse and sort of promote that storyaround the City of London with his bank-ing friends and colleagues.”

Hollingsworth’s job was to pull it all to-gether – the financial profiling and the hu-man interest elements from Sark – andturn it all into a compelling, and for the Bar-clays Brothers, very damaging big read.

But in the Spring of 2015, McKillen andthe Barclays settled their differences. Un-der a deal, both sold their stakes in thethree London hotels to Qatari interests inan agreement that nonetheless allowedMcKillen to continue to lead, direct and de-velop them, something he does with enthu-siasm.

Suddenly, peace had broken out andHollingsworth never got to write his bigread, either in newspaper or book form.He even had a provisional title for it andeven circulated a draft chapter.

“It was crap,” according to one personwho read it, “really bad.”

McKillen celebrated the end of the sagaby hosting drinks in Claridge’s. Amongthose present were Aynsley and Wood-house, along with others, notably JohnRocha, who designed a glass chapel for asculpture park at Chateau La Coste, McKil-len’s 600-acre vineyard estate near Aix enProvence, his paean to organic wine, artand architecture. Also in attendance wasRichard Rogers, architect of a pavilion atthe chateau; and his wife, Michelin-rankedchef and restaurateur Ruth Rogers.

For his efforts – for the work carried out,and other work that, because of the settle-ment, would never see the light of day – inMarch 2015 Hollingsworth was paid£22,000, the advance, in effect, for a bookthat would never be written.

The money McKillen paid to Hollings-worth was through a third party who wasreimbursed. The end of the McKillen-Bar-clay Brothers saga meant that Hollings-worth was now free to do other things.

Asked to comment on the payment toHollingsworth, and the role he, Aynsleyand Woodhouse played in the battle withthe Barclays, McKillen said yesterday: “Allthese matters are behind us and subject toa confidential settlement agreement.”

As coincidence would have it, the mediawas reporting the McKillen-Barclay Broth-ers deal on the very day that RTÉ informedO’Brien that it was probing the bankingdeals he and McKillen had with IBRC.

LexHouseConnaught Place is a small cul-de-sac astone’s throw from Mayfair. One side ofthe narrow street near Marble Arch is dom-inated by a terrace of tall houses whose Re-gency-style, glossy white-painted porticosextend over the pavement. Opposite themis a modern office block – a bunker-likeglass and brick rectangular edifice that ris-es at one end to a six-storey square that tow-ers over the terrace.

The modern block at No 17 is named LexHouse, after the Latin word for law. Thethird floor is the UK headquarters of Ala-co, which describes itself as a “leading busi-ness intelligence firm”.

Alaco makes several proud boasts aboutthe services it offers clients, including thatit helps them “manage risk and protecttheir reputations through the provisionand analysis of information”.

“We serve our clients in many differentways and often answer questions that donot fit neatly into any category,” the com-pany proclaims on its website, alaco.com.“Our network, our ability to gather rele-vant intelligence, and over a decade of ex-perience, help us deliver meaningful re-sults, whatever the brief. From complex,multi-jurisdictional investigations to themost sensitive private matter, we assem-ble a team and determine a strategy appro-priate to the task.”

When Alaco is tasked to investigate, thecompany deploys what it hails as its “in-nate curiosity, our collective experience

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■Denis O’Brien and (inset)authorMark Hollingsworthwho claimed to a number ofindividuals hewaswriting aprofile on the businessman.PHOTOGRAPHS: DARA MAC DÓNAILL,ANDREW WIARD

TheO’Briendossierandthe spywhocameinto theDáilFor months, Denis O’Brien has battled Dublin public affairsfirm Red Flag in the High Court, claiming that an illegalconspiracy exists to damage him. But how did it come to this?Peter Murtagh examines a tortuous trail

8 THE IRISH TIMESSaturday, July 16 , 2016

and our worldwide network of proven con-tacts [to] bring depth and quality to our re-search and analysis.

“It makes us different. It delivers qualityof intelligence.”

Like state-run spying agencies, Alaco isa magnet for individuals with often exoticpasts.

During his time with MI6, AdrianStones used diplomatic cover while work-ing in Afghanistan and Pakistan, accord-ing to information given last year as part ofcourt proceedings relating to the windingup of a children’s charity in London.

His colleague, Ambrose Carey, has a fas-cinating personal lineage. He is the illegiti-mate son of the 12th Marquess of Queens-bury and half-brother of Caroline Carey,widow of Salem bin Laden, a half-brotherof Osama bin Laden.

There can be no doubt but that the storyof O’Brien, Red Flag and Hollingsworth is,as Alaco’s sales pitch puts it, complex, mul-ti-jurisdictional and sensitive.

No longer investigating the BarclayBrothers, the attention of Hollingsworthand Alaco turned elsewhere.

From the spring of 2015 on, everyone ap-proached by Hollingsworth is clear aboutone thing: in his questioning aboutO’Brien, he quickly came to the nub of hisinterest: the source of the leaks aboutO’Brien’s banking arrangements withIBRC and from where O’Brien’s criticswere getting their information.

Belief in Hollingsworth’s opening con-versational gambit – that he was writing aprofile about Denis O’Brien, the Irish oli-garch – never survived prolonged contactwith him.

On April 28th 2015, the day that news ofthe McKillen-Barclay Brothers deal broke,RTÉ researcher Pamela Fraher, who wasworking with the station’s business editorDavid Murphy, wrote to O’Brien and toIBRC. She posed a series of questions tothem about a deal O’Brien was alleged tohave concluded with Aynsley over the rateof interest the bank charged the business-man and the time it allowed him repay hisloans.

Within two days, O’Brien was asking thecourts to ban RTÉ reporting details of hisbanking arrangements – and to restrict themedia also from reporting of his requestfor the ban.

Some of what O’Brien and the bankwanted kept confidential emerged in theDáil when, on May 28th, Catherine Mur-phy raised O’Brien’s allegedly preferentialtreatment by the bank. Her comments,and similar remarks from the Sinn Féin fi-nance spokesman Pearse Doherty, result-ed in further legal action by O’Brien, in-cluding threats by his solicitors thatcaused The Irish Times and RTÉ to delayfor several days reporting what she hadsaid in the Dáil.

The Irish Times sought, and obtained,clarity from the High Court affirming themedia’s right to report proceedings of theOireachtas.

In London, Woodhouse asked a mem-ber of McKillen’s Barclay Brothers war cab-inet who they thought might be “leaking in-formation to Catherine Murphy”. Over thecoming months, at least one journalistworking for O’Brien asked the same ques-tion of professional colleagues in other me-dia organisations.

During June and July, Hollingsworthwas also asking the question. In numerousinterviews, he only ever deviated fromO’Brien as his main subject to ask about de-veloper Joe O’Reilly and Dundrum shop-ping centre.

At the time, McKillen was one of severalbidders for the centre, which was part ofProject Jewel, a portfolio of loans relatingto the centre, which the National AssetManagement Agency sold eventually to anAnglo-German consortium that did not in-clude him.

One of the first people Hollingsworthcontacted was Barry Moloney, a formerclose personal friend and business partnerof O’Brien.

Hollingsworth had acquired Moloney’s086 number, one he had since 1997 whenhe was working with O’Brien at Esat Digi-fone. Hollingsworth tracked him down onholidays in southern California. Moloneywas surprised he had his number.

Hollingsworth didn’t respond whenasked where he got it.

In a conversation that lasted about 10minutes, Hollingsworth said he was writ-ing, for the Sunday Times, an article aboutO’Brien and “his stranglehold on Ireland”.

‘Weird’phonecallMoloney found the conversation “weird”and, as he told people later, noted that Holl-ingsworth kept coming back to askingabout Catherine Murphy’s sources.

Moloney decided to check Hollings-worth out and called Irish-born but Lon-don-based PR consultant and lobbyistRory Godson. Godson said he too had hadan email from Hollingsworth. He con-firmed that Hollingsworth had told himalso that he was writing something for theSunday Times.

In late August, Hollingsworth calledMoloney again to say he was coming toDublin and asked to arrange a meeting.Hollingsworth was also looking for a con-tact number for Lucinda Creighton.

Moloney, who was unable to meet Holl-ingsworth in Dublin, didn’t have a numberfor Creighton but thought that former jour-nalist Karl Brophy of Red Flag Consulting,whom Moloney met in 2012 at GavinO’Reilly’s wedding, might. Brophy was onholiday with his wife and daughters at a hol-iday camp near Montpellier in southwestFrance when he got Moloney’s requestand texted Creighton, who was at the Elec-tric Picnic festival in Stradbally.

Creighton’s willingness to meet Holl-ingsworth (which she did when he came toDublin) and Brophy’s role is setting up thecontact was the start of the saga for RedFlag.

Ian Kehoe, editor of the Sunday Busi-ness Post, was nervous when Hollings-worth approached him in the summer of2015 wanting to talk about O’Brien. Thebusinessman is suing the newspaper overan article written by associate editor TomLyons.

Background checking on Hollings-worth by Lyons, including a call to the Sun-day Times in London who said Hollings-worth was not working for them, con-vinced Kehoe to keep his distance.

For Lyons, the decision was easy.“He just struck me as a classic ‘looks like

a journalist but is he a journalist?’” recallsLyons. “I just said to Ian don’t talk to thisguy and Ian said, ‘okay I won’t.’”

At about this same time, RTÉ’s DavidMurphy was also contacted by Hollings-worth. His line was the same: he was writ-ing a big story on O’Brien for the SundayTimes. But, during a 30-minute phone con-versation, Hollingsworth soon began ask-ing Murphy for his sources for theO’Brien-injuncted IBRC story.

Throughout the summer, Hollings-worth tried to use contacts he made whileworking for McKillen to access politicians,notably Catherine Murphy, via, among oth-ers Mick Wallace.

In August, Anne Marie McNally, an ad-viser to Murphy, was on holiday, oddlyenough, on Anna Maria Island at themouth of Tampa Bay in Florida, when shegot an email from Hollingsworth.

He said that he was “working on an arti-cle about Denis O’Brien for the SundayTimes UK edition which will focus on his fi-nances, his loans and the legal actions hehas taken against newspapers and broad-casters”.

DáilquestioningThey agreed a mutually convenient timefor a phone call but, from the start of theconversation, Hollingsworth made herfeel uncomfortable because he kept askingfor the source of the information behindMurphy’s Dáil questioning, in a way thatseemed to invite her to agree to details thathe was advancing to her.

“He would also make comments alongthe lines of ‘So, this Anglo official musthave been disgruntled . . .’ to which I wouldreply ‘Well, you are making an assumptionthat it is an Anglo official. I didn’t saythat,’” recalled McNally.

She concluded, as did others ap-proached during the summer, that Holl-ingsworth was essentially fishing for Mur-phy’s sources and was not engaged in a nor-mal journalistic exercise.

Hollingsworth’s visit to Dublin tookplace at the start of the second week of Sep-tember. He and his partner stayed fromSeptember 7th to 8th in inexpensive, stu-dent accommodation in Trinity College.

During his stay, Hollingsworth met,among others, David Murphy, LucindaCreighton and Catherine Murphy. Themeeting with Murphy, who was accompa-nied by McNally, was at 11am in room C ofthe Dáil’s Leinster House 2000 extension.

During the conversation, a familiar pat-tern emerged early.

“We just got a bad feeling,” recalls Mur-phy. “He was only interested at the meet-ing . . . he kept trying to narrow [into our]‘source’. We just kept on saying ‘sources’because that’s the factual situation. It waslike an interrogation.”

Back in London following his flying visitto Dublin, Hollingsworth again contactedRed Flag’s Brophy and asked if he knewany “whistleblowers” with informationabout O’Brien or any other sources for in-formation about the businessman?

Brophy said he didn’t but he had a pile ofnewspaper cuttings and related materialand Hollingsworth was welcome to havethat. Hollingsworth said he’d like to seethe material.

Brophy – still in southwest France –emailed Brid Murphy, a Red Flag col-league in Dublin, and asked her to sendHollingsworth the cuttings and related ma-terial on O’Brien, which contained littlethat was not already on the public record.

Following Brophy’s request, on or aboutSeptember 8th, Brid Murphy emailedHollingsworth a link to Dropbox, an onlinedata-sharing service, where he would findthe dossier that is now at the heart ofO’Brien’s case against the PR company – acompendium of 339 files, most of themcopies of articles (newspaper cuttings) onO’Brien that had been published already inIrish, British and international media.

There were also several other files thatread like briefing papers for new readers,as it were. They dealt with biographical de-tails of O’Brien’s life and business career,

what the Moriarty tribunal report saidabout him and Michael Lowry, and a draftspeech by then Fianna Fáil TD Colm Keav-eney in which he excoriated O’Brien.

There is no love lost between Brophyand O’Brien, nor indeed between RedFlag’s non-executive chairman GavinO’Reilly, and O’Brien. Indeed, in many re-spects, the battle between O’Brien and thePR company has the characteristics of aproxy war, a continuation of the strugglefor control of Independent News and Me-dia in which O’Brien emerged victoriousover Tony O’Reilly, Gavin O’Reilly’s fa-ther.

It was perhaps not surprising, there-fore, that Brophy sought to assist Hollings-worth, in the then belief that Hollings-worth was gathering information againstO’Brien.

To that end, Brophy even set up a tele-phone interview between Hollingsworthand the Red Flag client on whose behalfthe dossier of newspaper cuttings and ofthe man and his business record had beenassembled.

On the appointed weekend, Hollings-worth rang the client three times, but de-spite being alerted to expect a call, the cli-ent missed all three. It is perhaps instruc-tive as to the importance both Hollings-worth and the client appear to have at-tached to their abortive relationship thatneither seemed at all bothered at havingfailed to make contact and capitalise onBrophy’s introduction.

It is unclear what, if anything, Hollings-worth did with this information about RedFlag’s client which, in any event, wouldonly have been hearsay.

Later in September, on the 18th, Holl-ingsworth had his delayed meeting withMoloney, who again thought him “weird”.On the 25th at the Chelsea Harbour Hotel,he also met Brophy, who was in London fora Red Flag board meeting, for the first andonly time.

Brophy was nonplussed at theirface-to-face encounter, telling friends lat-er that Hollingsworth “hadn’t a f***in’rasher’s what he was doing. It was just allover the place”.

As a result of this encounter, Brophy re-fused to respond to further overtures fromHollingsworth.

Hollingsworth has told people hethought the material on the Dropbox dossi-er was commonplace and pretty valuelessin terms of disclosing any fresh informa-tion about O’Brien.

It certainly didn’t present any fresh in-sights into the man nor reveal anythingabout the sources of Catherine Murphy’sIBRC information.

Hollingsworth claims that the dossierfound its way to the business intelligencecompany Alaco, by a route that was eitherdirect from himself or indirect through athird party.

DigicelflotationOn October 5th, the Dropbox was ac-cessed and some of the material was down-loaded. The remaining material, whichwas the bulk of the dossier, was download-ed the following day, October 6th – coinci-dently the day the flotation of O’Brien’smain telecommunications company Digi-cel was withdrawn for market reasons, ac-cording to O’Brien.

Soon after O’Brien’s case against RedFlag erupted in the High Court, Hollings-worth told several people that, at a meet-ing in a London internet cafe, he had giventhe dossier to a person from Alaco via ac-cess to the Dropbox link and that it wasdownloaded on to what might have been aportable hard drive.

“He tried to sort of give us a bum steeron the dates,” said one person to whomHollingsworth spoke, who has been inter-viewed extensively by The Irish Times. Ac-cording to this source, Hollingsworth said“he met with the Alaco representative,who was the young woman, in an internetcafe in Earl’s Court . . .

“He said she had some sort of machine,about six inches long, he said he logged onto his internet account, he got into theDropbox thing, he walked away and shedownloaded the Red Flag material on tosome sort of machine.”

The internet cafe where Hollingsworthsaid the handover took place, before chang-ing his story, did indeed exist. It was locat-ed at 181 Earl’s Court Road, London, andwas operating in early October 2015 – atabout the time Hollingsworth said he meta person there from Alaco.

Today, it has relocated and the slightlyseedy first-floor room it occupied has beenabandoned, the only remaining evidenceof its existence being plastic signs abovethe entrance door and in the window pro-claiming “Internet Cafe”.

After his name was publicly associatedwith O’Brien’s action against Red Flag,Hollingsworth recanted this version ofevents and now denies that he met anyonein an internet cafe and facilitated down-loading from Dropbox.

“Didn’t happen,” he says, claiming abreakdown caused by stresses in his per-sonal life prompted him to tell lies to peo-ple to evoke their sympathy.

To other sources, however, he contin-ues to confirm that the contents of theDropbox were indeed passed to Alaco,though sometimes he introduces into hisnarrative version an unidentified third-par-ty intermediary as the person to whom hegave access to the Dropbox and who thenpassed the data to Alaco.

We asked Alaco to comment on this butthey did not respond.

Hollingsworth has stated consistentlythat the Dropbox dossier contents are iden-tical to the contents of a USB memory stickwhich is at the centre of O’Brien’s legal ac-tion against Red Flag Consulting.

Within a few days of the Red Flag dossi-er being downloaded from the Dropbox,O’Brien says a USB memory stick arrived,out of the blue, in an envelope at his officein Dublin. He gave it, he says, to AidenEames, the solicitor who had acted for hisfriend and IBRC loan associate, Paddy Mc-Killen.

When O’Brien read the contents of theUSB stick, he was, he says, “shocked”.

According to an affidavit he swore on Oc-tober 13th launching his legal actionagainst Red Flag the following day, an ac-tion in which the solicitor acting forO’Brien is Eames, the contents of the USBstick “were simply extraordinary”.

Asked to comment on the role of Holl-ingsworth and Alaco and the provenanceof the dossier central to his case againstRed Flag, a spokesman for O’Brien said:“We are not making any comment.”

InMay2016,TheIrishTimesrequestedaninterviewwithRichardWoodhouseonthe“McKillen-BarclayBrotherssagaandvariouspeoplethatbecameembroiledinit,priortoitbeingsettled”andabout“thestrategising,thePRbattleandtheworkofProjectAssociates,andAlacoandMarkHollingsworth”.Decliningourrequest,Woodhousesaid

thatanythingheandMikeAynsleyhaddonesinceleavingIBRC“isunderstandablyboundbyclientconfidentiality”.Earlierthismonth,havingpreviously

madeanumberofoverturestoAlacoduringanextensiveinvestigation,TheIrishTimessentAmbroseCareyaseriesofspecificanddetailedquestionsaboutMarkHollingsworthandhisworkwiththebusinessintelligencecompany.Theyincludedquestionsassertingthat

HollingsworthwasgatheringinformationaboutDenisO’BrienandthesourceofleaksaboutO’Brien;thatHollingsworthmetanAlacoemployeeandgavethemaccesstotheDropboxfilewiththeRedFlag-assembleddossieronO’Brien;andonothermattersrelatingtoHollingsworth’srelationshiptoAlaco.NeitherthecompanynorCareyhas

respondedtoanyofourrequestsforcomment.Whenphotographingtheexteriorof

Alaco’sLondonofficesfromtheroadwayoutside,amanapproachedfrominsidethebuildingandsaidwedidnothave“permission”.MarkHollingsworthdeclinedtobe

interviewed.

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Within a fewdays of theRedFlagdossier being downloaded from theDropbox,O’Brien says aUSBmemory stick arrived, out of the blue,in an envelope at his office inDublin

‘‘

Belief inHollingsworth’sopeningconversationalgambit – thathewaswritingaprofile aboutDenisO’Brien, the Irisholigarch–never survivedprolongedcontactwithhim

‘‘

Lineofquestions‘TheIrishTimes’ requests

THE IRISH TIMESSaturday, July 16 , 2016 9

One question stands outamong the many that arisein the Denis O’Brien versusRed Flag Consulting legalaction. Why did O’Briengive the USB memory stick,

the sole piece of evidence upon which helaunched his extraordinary case byseeking a search and seize warrant againstRed Flag, to Martin Coyne, a man who hasno qualifications in computer forensics asclaimed and who has, according to expertswho do have precisely those skills, dam-aged that evidence to the point of useless-ness?

And in seeking to probe the many otherquestions around that single impondera-ble, a new figure had emerged in the sagato beguile those trying to make sense of itall.

He is “Employee 18883”, a previouslyunknown character in this opaque drama.

EnvelopeondeskAccording to Denis O’Brien’s version ofevents, he – Denis O’Brien – returned tohis office, the headquarters of Communi-corp Group at 1 Grand Canal Quay,Dublin, to find that an envelope, markedfor his attention, was sitting on his desk.

It is not known how it got there –Communicorp’s offices are protected byCCTV, so the person delivering it to thebuilding might have been caught oncamera – and it is not known if any internalmail distribution staff brought it toO’Brien’s desk and might be able toilluminate its provenance.

In any event, O’Brien opened theenvelope and says that inside it, he found aUSB memory stick. Written on the insideof the envelope itself there was also, hesays, the access password for the stick,Chelsea10.

It was October 8th, 2015. Just two daysbefore, the bulk of some 339 individualfiles had been downloaded from a Drop-box internet file-sharing account, wherethey had been put by Red Flag for MarkHollingsworth. Hollingsworth is a some-time journalist who, unknown to everyonehe approached in Dublin between Julyand September 2015 asking questionsabout the sources of leaks about O’Brien,was working with a London corporateintelligence-gathering company namedAlaco.

Hollingsworth has acknowledged thatthe files given to him by Red Flag madetheir way to Alaco. The 339 files weremostly copies of articles that had ap-peared in Irish and international mediaabout O’Brien – his life and career, andwhat the Moriarty tribunal said about himand Michael Lowry.

There were also some original docu-ments, a draft speech by then Fianna FáilTD Colm Keaveney, as well as profile andbiographical material on O’Brien, whosetone and content made clear that theywere not authored by fans of the business-man.

It is not known how the files got on tothe memory stick and allegedly made theirway to Denis O’Brien’s desk. But whenlater he saw them (and the precise date ofthat revelation is also not known) he sayshe was shocked, thought that they were“simply extraordinary” and confirmed hislong-held suspicion of a criminal conspira-cy to do him down.

O’Brien says he gave the USB to hissolicitor, Aidan Eames, apparentlywithout at that time reading the contents,and within a day, it was passed to Espion, aSandyford-based company that specialis-es in cybersecurity and digital forensicanalysis.

Espion says it was asked to “conduct aforensic analysis of multiple documentsfound on an encrypted SanDisk USB discand to produce a report detailing theproperties and features” of the “multipledocuments” on the stick.

Espion’s report, dated October 12th andwhich was the basis of his legal action forwhich he swore his first affidavit onOctober 13th, lists all the documents andshows a particular interest in several,notably one named “DOB/Water andSiteserv and Bank writeoffs/Irish Parlia-ment statements and Inquiries”, othersdealing with media coverage and Keav-eney’s draft speech.

All the documents on the USB stickwere held inside an encrypted “vault”, ineffect a digital folder, access to which wasprotected by encryption.

Digital forensic investigation bestpractice guidelines, enunciated by Acpo,the Association of Chief Police OfficersAssociation of England, Wales andNorthern Ireland, and adhered to by allreputable digital forensic investigators,have it that an investigator should digitallycopy something under investigation, setthe original to one side and work only onthe copy – probing it for date of creation,authorship, editing history and last use,documenting everything that is done, stepby step – and retain that copy too.

In this way, the original evidenceremains pristine, or unmolested, and canstand the rigours of being tested in anylegal action, including the most hotlycontested criminal trials.

This did not happen with the O’BrienUSB, however. But far more serious thanthat sin of omission, were sins of commis-sion – tampering with primary evidence –which were manifold.

On the afternoon of October 13th,lawyers acting for O’Brien had tried – butfailed – to get their search and seize order(it is called an Anton Pillar order) but weregranted instead what was a preservationorder telling Red Flag, in effect, not todestroy anything and also not to reveal theexistence of the order itself.

At 10.03 the next day, October 14th, asRed Flag was preparing to go to court torespond to this edict, several files in theencrypted vault on the USB stick wereaccessed directly.

They include a folder named “IrishParliament statements and Inquiries”inside of which were the following files:“Anyone but Denis – don’t sell to DenisO’Brien.pdf”, “Fresh Siteserv row forIBRC.pdf”, “Irish Minister for Finance

kept in dark oversiteserv deal.pdf”, “Probe O’Brien’dealings with special IBRC liquida-tor.pdf”, “Share trades spike beforesiteserv deal.pdf”, “Siteserv delivers forDenis O’Brien.pdf”, “Siteserv sold toDenis O’Brien firm for Ôé¼45 mil-lion.pdf”, “Siteserv story – digging fordirt.pdf”, “Siteserv – pulling the piecestogether.pds”, and “State memo slamssitreserv.pdf”.

Why these files were singled out, and bywhom, is not known. Equally, what, ifanything, was done is impossible to tellbut the fact that the originals wereaccessed which means that, in the world ofcrime scene investigation, the evidence isno longer pristine.

“It’s a bit like a CSI investigator examin-ing a piece of DNA without wearingsurgical gloves,” said one forensic analyst.

The precise whereabouts of the USB at10.03 on October 14th is unknown, at leastto this reporter. But later on that date,Denis O’Brien’s lawyers were arguingbefore Mr Justice Colm Mac Eochaidh,and Red Flag’s lawyers, that all of the fileson the USB needed to be forensicallyimaged immediately because their client –O’Brien – feared that the evidence onwhich his case was based – the USB stick –might be tampered with.

And that is what happened but it wasdone by O’Brien’s agent, Martin Coyne,whose story keeps changing as the DenisO’Brien/Red Flag saga has unfolded.

TheinvestigatorDenis O’Brien and Martin Coyne knoweach other. Coyne’s company, Digitpol,has worked for O’Brien’s company,Digicel, and what O’Brien says are “hisassociated companies” without specifying

whichone or whatservices have beenprovided byCoyne/Digitpol. O’Brien saysthat in this instance, he asked Coyne

to further analyse the USB stick becauseof Digitpol’s “background as a digitalinvestigations and cyber fraud investi-gations business”.

However, Coyne is not a digitalforensic investigator. He was em-ployed once at the centre for cybersecu-

rity and cybercrime investigation inUniversity College Dublin. He does not

have a degree and UCD has no record ofhim achieving any qualification orcertification from the college, notwith-standing a sworn affidavit assertion to thecontrary from an Eames solicitor.

Coyne’s talents, which even his criticsacknowledge he has, are in vehicleforensics – extracting data from vehiclesinvolved in crashes.

His ideas sometimes had a flash ofbrilliance about them. For instance, atUCD he was trying to develop a surveil-lance gadget, of the sort police mightattach to the car of a criminal suspect tohelp monitor their movements, that couldleech power from the vehicle itself,thereby extending its life well beyond thelimits of its own battery.

“It was very clever,” says one formercolleague. “But he’s a Walter Mittycharacter and this is the problem withMartin.”

Digitpol is a registered company withonly one known employee – MartinCoyne. According to itself, however, it has“computer forensic laboratories” in NewYork, The Netherlands, Hong Kong andChina.

The Irish Times visited the company’spurported base in Hong Kong, located inthe impressive-sounding Bank of AmericaTower in the city’s Admiralty area. Itappears, however, to be an accommoda-tion address only, a place that forwardsmail and messages, and provides similarassistance to multiple companies.

The location, size and staffing, if any, ofDigitpol’s labs allegedly in New York andChina are unknown.

In the Netherlands, the company, orrather Martin Coyne, operates from arather characterless-looking office in amundane business park in the commutertown of Barendrecht, about 15km south-east of Rotterdam.

It is from here that three reports haveemanated, each one attempting to explainwhat happened to the sole body of evi-

dencein Denis

O’Brien’s caseagainst Red Flag after

the USB stick was takenthere by Martin Coyne on October

14th.Two days after that, on October 16th,

Mr Justice Mac Eochaidh directed thatthe USB be given to Eames solicitors“forthwith”, to be held by them and notinterfered with pending a full hearing ofO’Brien’s conspiracy and defamation caseagainst Red Flag.

But far from being given to Eamesforthwith, the USB stick remained outsidethe jurisdiction of the High Court for a full10 days – until October 26th – duringwhich time files were accessed, deletedand altered in a way and to a degree thatqualified forensic digital analysts sayrenders the USB as useless in evidentialterms. Eames has since asserted it askedfor the return of the stick before that date.

In his first report, dated January 21st,2016, Martin Coyne says that while theUSB was in his office in Barendrecht, itwas taken in and out of a radio frequencyidentification (RFID) safe, a secure placefor critical evidence, access to which was“recorded and signed by senior manage-ment”.

Each version of Digitpol’s three re-ports, which Coyne says were compiledfrom memory, shows nonetheless whatpurports to be a printout of a log record-ing access to the safe. It is headlined,somewhat stoutly in bold lettering, AccessLog to Vault.

While Coyne’s memory allows accuraterecall down to the precise minute – 0601h,1205h, 0605h, to give examples – much ofthe rest of his recall is faulty, on his ownadmission.

The people accessing the safe andhandling the USB stick included in thefirst report Coyne and two colleagues,named as R Smit and D Pinter. However,R Smit appears to be a Rotterdam policevehicle controller and cosmetics importerfriend of Coyne, while D Pinter appears tohave been Coyne’s partner.

The revelation that Coyne was in fact inRiga, Latvia, when the purported digitalrecord of the RFID safe had him in theNetherlands examining the USB, prompt-ed report number two, dated February2nd, 2016.

On this, Coyne’s name was replaced bySmit’s for the key dates.

But the revelation that Smit is in realitya Rotterdam police vehicle controller gavebirth in turn to report number three,dated March 4th, 2016. The pair met whenCoyne did some vehicle crash investiga-tion work with the city’s police depart-ment.

In this third report, Smit has vanished,to be replaced by the intriguing “employeenumber 18883”, whose shadow now fallsacross Denis O’Brien’s USB stick evi-dence.

In report number three, Coyne explainshimself thus, having reread reports oneand two, which he himself wrote: “It wasnoted that certain inaccuracies werecontained in the prior reports and it wasdetermined to carry out a complete reviewand amend the prior reports.

“In this regard, in the previous reports,it was stated that R Smit was the personthat operated the safe. In fact, R Smit wasnot the person that operated the safe. Forthe avoidance of doubt, R Smit is anassociate of Digitpol but was not involvedin this case. The person that actuallyoperated the safe is an associate of

Digitpol since 2013 andworks solely in Digitpol’s

covert unit. In light of this associate’srole in Digitpol’s covert unit, his currentinvolvement in a sensitive criminalinvestigation and the high degree ofpublicity attaching to the current proceed-ings it is not proposed to disclose thisindividual’s identify further.”

So what was “employee number 18883”actually doing? According to reportnumber three, he was taking the USB stickto the “investigation team” who “decided

to deploy” various software forensictools, including one named Cellebrite, toexamine it.

From the other side of Europe, mean-while, Coyne himself “deployed” Celleb-rite “via a secured VPN [virtual privatenetwork] tunnel from a remote location inRiga, Latvia”.

We asked a cautious digital forensicanalyst about this. “It is probably notplausible,” he said. “You probably couldset up a remote connection that enabledyou [do this] but also, if you have a forensi-cally [qualified] individual there [inRotterdam] with their hands on this, itbegs the question why you need to beremote accessing it from another countryin a really convoluted manner? It is notpossible to say that it couldn’t havehappened but it does seem very odd.”

But it is the cack-handed and invasiveexamination of the USB’s encryptedchamber that is most telling. The team ofdigital forensic experts retained by RedFlag, a US-headquartered companynamed Stroz Freidberg, that was foundedby former FBI agents and includes on itsstaff former officers with Britain’s inter-nal security service, MI5, found the USBwas contaminated and altered significant-ly.

On October 24th, 2015, the day the USBwas finally returned to Dublin in compli-ance with the High Court order, Coyneaccessed the stick one last time and endedup accidentally creating eight new files.

“But it gets worse,” said an analystfamiliar with the evidence in the case.“Not only were these files created, Digit-pol then deleted them. Their eventualexplanation was this was an accident,caused by incompetence.

“They’re saying that when they wereusing Cellebrite to copy the device, butwhen you’re copying, you say ‘here’s whatI’m copying from’ and ‘here’s what I’mcopying to’. But you have to tell Cellebritewhich is which, so you’ve got two connec-tions, and they got it the wrong wayaround. . . What Digitpol did was try todelete the evidence of what they’d done; sothey deleted the files back off and didn’tdocument it!”

It was not until December 11th thatStroz got access to the USB stick anduncovered what had been done to it.Martin Coyne’s role as keeper of the USBstick for 10 crucial days remained un-known to all bar O’Brien’s side untilJanuary 21st – 100 days after the casebegan.

LitigationfocusThe focus of O’Brien’s litigation againstRed Flag has shifted somewhat in recentweeks to his seeking a High Court orderfor discovery – the legal power to obtainfrom Red Flag all documents relevant tothe case and, in particular, the identity ofRed Flag’s client on whose behalf thedossier of documents on the USB stick wascreated.

Meanwhile in Barendrecht, Digitpol’sEuropean headquarters are strangelyquiet. Number 73 Ebweg is a rectangu-lar-shaped, two-storey, semi-detachedpremises, almost identical to every otherblack metal and deep brown building inthe small business park. There is nonameplate but above the door, in afirst-floor window, there a small telescopesimilar to those favoured by birdwatchers,and a CCTV camera lens.

The blinds are drawn but behind theentrance door is an office with a darkinterior. There is a large black TV screenmounted on a wall and, in the centre of theroom, a glass-top conference table andfour chairs.

The room is otherwise bare. The rear ofthe building appears to be a separatepremises, number 51. It is like a lock-upgarage and inside an ageing VW car ishaving its battery charged in a roomcluttered with aluminium tubing andpersonal gym equipment.

Martin Coyne is an affable and notunfriendly man. In a brief encounter fourweeks ago as he arrived for work, heexplained that he was unable to discussthe case.

O’Brien’s case against Red Flag wasengaging, though, he remarked.

“I think it’s an interesting case and Ithink there’s a lot of qualities in it, youknow,” he said. “I mean, on one hand, it’samazing that these people [Red Flag] putsuch documents together.”

He felt certain that witnesses – Smit,Pinter and “employee number 18883” –would give evidence at the trial, wheneventually it takes place.

“Well, I’d imagine if the judge requiresit, they would, yeah,” he said.

The all too brief chat turned to aninquiry about his qualifications.

“How’s the weather in Ireland?” heresponded. “There’s always less windhere.”

The Denis O’Briendossier: whathappened next

PeterMurtagh

DenisO’BrienclaimsthatRedFlag,aDublin-basedPRcompany,assembledadossieroffilesonhimandthatthisfact,togetherwiththefilesthemselves,showsthereisacriminalconspiracytodamagehimandhisbusinesses,andtodefamehim.ThedossieriscontainedonaUSBmemorystickthatisatthecentreofhisHighCourtactionagainstthefirm.RedFlagdeniesthisand

hasrefusedtonametheclientonwhosebehalfthedossierwasassembled.

MuchoftheanimusdirectedatO’Brien,generallyandinthedossier,concernsthe2011findings,bytheMoriartytribunal,thatthenministerforcommunicationsMichaelLowry“securedthewinning”,forO’Brien,ofthe1995mobiletelephonelicencebyimpartingtoO’Brieninformation“ofsignificantvalueandassistancetohiminsecuringthelicence”.Thetribunalfoundthat

O’BrienmadepaymentstoLowryin1996and1999.

O’BrienandLowryhavealwaysdeniedanywrong-doinganddismissedthetribunalfindings,whichO’Briensaysismerelyan“opinion”.SomeotherfilesinthedossierrefertoSiteServ,acompanyboughtbyO’Brien,andIBRC,abankusedbyO’Brien.Commentsonboth

subjectshavedrawnfuriousreactionsfromthebusinessman,includingseverallegalactions,includingagainsttheOireachtas.

2February,2016 4March,2016

21January,201

6

■Below right:Martin Coyne

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6 THE IRISH TIMESSaturday, July 23 , 2016