Mabey pair deny Saddam charges

A millionaire businessman made a corrupt payment to Saddam Hussein's regime to secure a "shady deal", a court heard yesterday.

Mabey Group's owner, David Mabey, whose family features in The Sunday Times Rich List with a fortune of £196m, was accused of inflating the price of a project to build bridges so that the Iraqi government would receive a "kick-back".

He is standing trial alongside his former colleague Richard Forsyth. The pair denies giving consent or conniving to bump up the price of a contract worth €3.8m (£3.2m) to €4.2m. The 10 per cent increase was knowingly given to Iraq by the privately owned Mabey and Johnson in a scheme the oil-rich country came up with to bypass United Nations sanctions and exploit the "oil for food" programme, the jury was told.

Last April , another manager of the company, Richard Glenhill, 64, pleaded guilty to making €4.2m available to the Republic of Iraq, or a resident of Iraq, between May 2001 and November 2002.

The pair standing trial face an almost identical charge, the difference being that they connived or, as the prosecutor, Peter Blair QC, put it, "turned a blind eye" to the payments. Addressing the jury and Judge Rivlin QC, Recorder of Westminster, the prosecutor described Mabey and Johnson as a privately owned company which is one of a number of companies within the Mabey Group.