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Richard Sydenham at Southwark Crown Court
October 14, 2011
Agent Mazhar Majeed had bank overdrafts of more than £700,000 and at least 27 bank accounts, a court heard on Friday in the ongoing alleged spot-fixing trial involving Pakistan cricketers Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif.
As the prosecution neared a conclusion to its evidence on the eighth afternoon of the trial, policeman Detective Constable Steven Blake from the Special Investigations Unit at New Scotland Yard, gave detailed information of Majeed's financial situation when probed by the case's junior prosecutor Sarah Whitehouse and Ali Bajwa QC, Butt's legal representative.
Majeed was recorded on a secret camera accepting two separate amounts of £10,000 and then £140,000 from an undercover journalist working for the News of the World to assist with cheating involving Pakistan cricketers. That money was marked by the investigators.
The jury heard that Majeed had two accounts with the Allied Irish Bank, three accounts with the Clydesdale Bank, one account with the Royal Bank of Scotland-owned Coutts, one account with Barclays and as many as 21 accounts with the NatWest Bank - with 13 of those closed by the time of the police investigation but eight were still active. One of those NatWest accounts was £497,949 overdrawn.
Bajwa, who has already sought to discredit Majeed previously in the trial, probed Blake further and confirmed with him in front of the court that his total overdraft debt was worth £704,043. He also revealed records of other multiple closed accounts with the HSBC Bank, prior to the case in question.
Alexander Milne QC, the barrister of Asif, re-established the point, while Blake was in the witness box, that no marked money belonging to the News of the World was found in Asif's hotel room when it was raided by police (£2,500 of marked money was found in Butt's room and £1,500 of marked money in Amir's room).
He also confirmed that Asif had no Swiss bank account, as Bajwa also did, though Blake explained that it was difficult to investigate the presence of Swiss bank accounts. Blake also said that of the £150,000 handed over by the newspaper, £104,300 is yet to be recovered.
Butt and Asif, clients of Majeed's, are facing charges of conspiracy to cheat, and conspiracy to obtain and accept corrupt payments, following the Lord's Test in August last year when they allegedly conspired with the agent, teenage fast bowler Mohammad Amir and other people unknown to bowl pre-determined no-balls. Butt and Asif deny the charges.
The case continues.
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