The chairman of the Moriarty Tribunal said today that the inquiry was not trying to draw analogies between multi-millionaire businessman Dermot Desmond and the Colombian drugs baron, Pablo Escobar.
Mr Justice Moriarty's comment came as civil servant witness, Sean McMahon, was being questioned about his knowledge of the involvement of Dermot Desmond in the application for the state's second mobile phone licence.
Tribunal Counsel questioned an assertion by the witness that the identity of an institutional investor did not necessarily matter when it came to the operation of the licence.
Jerry Healy for the Tribunal suggested that could not be correct and quipped: 'You wouldn't have given the licence to Pablo Escobar, that's for sure'.
The witness went on to accept that the team evaluating applications for the licence would have had to have known who was going to get the licence. 'If somebody could have been described as an institutional investor', Mr McMahon said, 'and did not deal in Colombian cocaine we would have been happy'.
It was after this exchange that the judge made his comment.
