Framed
EXCLUSIVE
The Murdoch newspaper empire is ignoring calls to release documents which show that Mazher “Fake Sheik” Mahmood was corrupt two decades before he was finally brought to book.
After Mahmood was caught lying during the Tulisa Contostavlos trial in 2014, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) dropped three pending cases based on his evidence.
The CPS also carried out a review of 25 of his earlier convictions. These included the actor John Alford and the entertainer Alex Smith.
Alford was gaoled for nine months in 1999 after a Mahmood cocaine sting. In the same year Smith was sentenced to six months after a sting involving counterfeit coins. Both insist they were framed.
None of the convictions was quashed. Smith failed to persuade the Court of Appeal to overturn his conviction.
But more and more evidence is emerging that Mahmood ran a criminal conspiracy that made it virtually impossible for most of his victims to get a fair trial.
The latest revelations show that police, prosecutors, the judiciary and the News of the World all knew that Mahmood was committing perjury as early as 1994 ...
In 2020 lawyers in the phone hacking litigation made an extraordinary discovery.
In an archive handed over by News UK, parent company of the News of the World, they found a series of dramatic documents about a crisis at the paper in 1994.
It followed an investigation by Mazher Mahmood into a drugs and tickets racket at Wimbledon.
Piers Morgan was editor. Rebekah Brooks was a reporter.
The documents — we’ll call them the Wimbledon Papers in this article — are not in the public domain but a summary of their contents was included in a statement read out in court last year.
The story begins in August 1992 with a Mahmood article headlined “The Great Pension Book Fiddle”.
Mahmood claimed he’d exposed:
… the biggest social security scam ever carried out in this country. Police estimate that it raked in £230 million last year in London alone.
He handed over his evidence to the police and two men were charged with conspiracy to defraud the DHSS.
The trial took place in April 1994.
When Mazher Mahmood gave evidence, he said his story was based on information supplied by a confidential source.
The defence believed that this informant had threatened one of the defendants — and asked that Mahmood’s source be identified.
Mahmood, on oath, insisted that his informant was not the person alleged to have threatened the defendant.
The next day, police told the defence that Mahmood had not been telling the truth.
The Wimbledon Papers include a letter written by a prosecution solicitor. He said police:
… had discovered that Mahmood’s informant … was in fact the same person referred to by the defence and [was] also a police informant who was assisting them with a number of other matters of great importance.
The judge indicated that he was minded to order the prosecution to name Mahmood’s informant. The solicitor noted that the police were not
… happy for the informant’s identity to be revealed as this would jeopardise a number of other, important investigations.
The prosecution offered no evidence and the case collapsed.
This case marks the first occasion when Mazher Mahmood gave misleading evidence in the witness box.
No newspaper, including the News of the World, reported the collapse of the court case — it was to be nearly three decades before the reasons surfaced.
The Wimbledon Papers also explore another Mazher Mahmood story, just two months after the pension book trial.
This time it was a front page splash: “Wimbledon Vice Scandal”.
Mahmood told the paper’s 4.8 million readers:
The News of the World has infiltrated a vice, drugs and tickets racket where the wealthy can buy best seats around the Royal Box.
… hookers guzzle champagne in marquees crammed with nobility and bishops, then return to hotels for orgies and lesbian shows.
Mahmood passed his evidence over to the police. He wrote:
A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police promised action. “We’re grateful for the information the News of the World has provided.
“We’ll investigate the allegations throughly …”
That investigation was to prove embarrassing for the Fake Sheik and the News of the World.
The Wimbledon Papers include a note from a drugs squad detective.
He noted that Mahmood had unlawfully obtained four tickets for Wimbledon from a tout named “Alan” as well as cocaine and the services of two prostitutes.
He added:
It would appear from the article that the reporter has participated in criminal activities without the correct authority and may even have placed himself in a situation where he may be liable to criminal prosecution.
His report was considered by more senior officers.
A detective inspector got in touch with the Met’s intelligence unit, SO10. He wrote:
I have held conversations with S010 and it would appear that the author of the newspaper article is known to them in an unfavourable context.
This “unfavourable context” was Mahmood’s role in the collapse of the pension book trial earlier that year.
SO10 were concerned that if a prosecution was to take place as a result of the Wimbledon story, this material was likely to become public.
There was no prosecution. No action was taken against Mahmood.
Lachlan Murdoch
The events outlined in this article are only part of the story.
The papers themselves remain confidential.
On Tuesday Press Gang wrote to Lachlan Murdoch, chairman of News Corps in New York, asking him to make them public.
We asked for an answer by close of play yesterday. He did not reply.
Rogue Journalist
The events of 1994 were a stark warning that Mazher Mahmood was a loose cannon.
The News of the World ignored these warnings.
So did police and prosecutors.
When scores of criminal cases relying on Mahmood’s evidence came to trial, judges refused to allow their legal teams to attack his track record.
This fatally shackled defence barristers — and the result was a series of convictions.
Among those gaoled were London’s Burning star John Alford and the entertainer Alex Smith. Both insist they were framed by Mahmood.
Among those who were convicted but escaped prison sentences were the disc jockey Johnnie Walker and Lord Hardwicke.
But many of the cases collapsed — including that involving Rhodri Giggs, brother of the Manchester United footballer Ryan Giggs — as a result of problems with Mahmood’s evidence.
These setbacks failed to stop the Fake Sheik juggernaut.
Rupert Murdoch was personally warned — in a Press Gang letter in 2012 — that Mahmood was a “serial perjurer”.
A similar letter was sent to the Metropolitan Police.
Both warnings were ignored.
It wasn’t until 2014 that justice finally caught up with Mahmood.
The climax came in the Tulisa Contostavlos case.
Just as in the 1994 pension book trial, Mahmood had given misleading testimony.
When he initially gave evidence he said he hadn’t spoken to his driver, Alan Smith, about a statement he’d given to police.
But the singer’s lawyers discovered that Smith had changed an earlier draft. In the first version he gave evidence that supported the singer’s claim that she disapproved of drugs.
Lawyers also discovered that the changes had been made after Mahmood discussed the issue with Smith.
He’d committed perjury. The trial was stopped and Tulisa Contostavlos, who had been facing a gaol sentence, walked free. It was a close shave.
Mahmood was gaoled for 15 months. His driver Alan Smith was given a 12 months suspended sentence.
In a strange twist, lawyers trying to overturn the convictions of Mahmood’s victims, including John Alford, now believe Alan Smith is the also the “Alan” who supplied drugs to Mahmood in the 1994 Wimbledon vice story ...
Ends
This is the first article in a Press Gang campaign to overturn some of Mahmood’s unsafe convictions. It follows a long series of articles about the Fake Sheik:
Fake Convictions — the article that exposed Mahmood’s lies about the number of successful criminal prosecutions he’d secured
Lying To Leveson — tells the inside story of how Mahmood was forced to admit he hadn’t told the truth to the Leveson Inquiry
The Sting In The Singer’s Tale — the most comprehensive account of the dramatic Tulisa Contoslavlos trial
Withering Heights — examines Mahmood’s troubled record when he worked at the Sunday Times under editor John Witherow after the closure of the News of the World.
UPDATE — FRAMED
Within a couple of hours after this article — about Mazher “Fake Sheik” Mahmood’s criminal conspiracy at the News of the World — was posted last week, News UK’s Executive Vice-President Daisy Dunlop, Director of Corporate Affairs, emailed:
Your letter to Lachlan Murdoch has been passed to me. You will of course be aware that he has no knowledge of historical matters concerning Mr Mahmood.
Please address any further correspondence for comment from the company to myself.
Daisy Dunlop did not answer our questions — would the company make public a series of papers that showed Mahmood was lying on oath as early as the early 1990s?
And — how did News UK gain copies of internal Scotland Yard files?
We asked again.
Daisy Dunlop replied:
We don't have any comment. This matter is the subject of live litigation and is being dealt with in court.
CORRECTIONS
On 12 May 2024 two corrections to this article were made:
— the Wimbledon Papers were disclosed in 2020 not 2021 as we said
— we said John Alford’s court of appeal application had failed. In fact, he hasn’t (yet) submitted an appeal
— we left out the sentences imposed on Mazher Mahmood and Alan Smith.
The article has been corrected.
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