businessman Denis O'Brien has written a hard-hitting letter to the Moriarty tribunal requesting that Jerry Healy SC, one of the tribunal's lawyers, be removed from his position "with immediate effect".

The Sunday Tribune has learned that the letter was sent to tribunal chairman Judge Michael Moriarty on 19 October attacking Healy and claiming that Moriarty should dismiss him as his position is "untenable".

O'Brien's letter was written in response to the recent circulation of documents by the tribunal's legal team in advance of Danish consultant Michael Andersen's evidence, which commenced last week.

The letter outlined: "I was simply astounded to receive from my solicitors late last week a copy document entitled 'Redacted Statement of Michael Andersen'. This document appears to be a severely edited/redacted version of the statement as signed by Professor Andersen and provided to the tribunal on 14 April 2010.

"It would appear that the tribunal has decided what matters Professor Andersen can and cannot address in his sworn statement and evidence to the tribunal.

"These are not edits; rather very significant sections of Professor Andersen's statement have been deliberately concealed by the tribunal... No explanation whatsoever was provided for the unilateral editing/decon­structing of Professor Andersen's statement."

Last week, Andersen's evidence at the tribunal claimed that key members of the tribunal's legal team had been biased from an early stage and this bias caused the tribunal to get it wrong in its confidential provisional findings, which were issued in 2008.

Andersen claimed that from an early stage, the tribunal's legal team latched onto the way a consortium called Persona came ahead of O'Brien's Esat at a particular stage in the completion and the tribunal pursued a "working hypothesis" against O'Brien on this basis. Persona eventually came second behind Esat in the mobile phone licence competition.