Drink-drive witness 'paid to be bogus expert'

MOTORISTS FACING drink-drive charges paid thousands of pounds for bogus scientific evidence to be given to courts to save their licences, an Old Bailey court was told yesterday.

For years, Godwin Onubogu made money out of drivers by hiring himself out as a bogus expert witness, o Louise Kamill, for the prosecution said. "He was, you may say, a rent-a-witness. He was prepared to dress lies up in scientific language, in order to deceive courts throughout London."

Mr Onubogu, 57, from Balham, south-west London, has denied doing acts tending or intended to pervert the course of justice on occasions between 1990 and 1996.

The prosecution alleges he was prepared to concoct defences "for men who were prepared to pay for the privilege.

"He was prepared to do that for drink-drivers who were desperate to keep their licences and prepared to pay for his services. They paid very large sums of money in cash."

Miss Kamill said Mr Onubogu used "sufficient quasi-scientific language - enough to bamboozle benches of magistrates."

Mr Onubogu might conclude the driver was suffering from a particular disease for which he or she were taking medication. He might conclude that blood or urine tests taken by the police could not be relied on and the court would be quite wrong to convict the motorist of drink-driving, Miss Kamill alleged.

The prepared reports appeared to come from a forensic scientist. They were signed by a man with letters after his name. "They were bogus facts and bogus conclusions," Miss Kamill told the jury.

Mr Onubogu made sure his reports were presentable. "No one would notice the duplication over and over again - how he reused one man's report for another," she said.

It only came to light when an official at the Forensic Science Service received three different reports from Mr Onubogu from three different courts. He noticed the duplication and their bogus nature.

The case continues today.