‘Fake sheikh’ facing jail and up to £800m claims
Fake Sheikh Mazher Mahmood is facing jail and a string of multi-million-pound lawsuits after being found guilty of tampering with evidence in the collapsed drugs trial of pop star Tulisa Contostavlos.
Following a two-week trial at the Old Bailey, a jury found the 53-yearold ‘King of the Sting’ and his driver, Alan Smith, 67, guilty of plotting to pervert the course of justice.
Following the verdict, it was announced that 18 civil claims were being launched against Mahmood which could total some £800m.
Media lawyer Mark Lewis said the claims would “dwarf” those brought following the phone-hacking scandal.
The Crown Prosecution Service has already dropped a number of live cases in the wake of the Tulisa trial and reviewed 25 past convictions.
Six of those involving mainly highprofile individuals have been taken up by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
The trial had heard that Mahmood and Smith conspired to suppress evidence in the N-Dubz star’s trial, which was thrown out at Southwark Crown Court in July 2014.
The singer had been accused of arranging for Mahmood to be sold £800 worth of cocaine by one of her contacts following an elaborate sting for the Sun on Sunday in May 2013.
During a meeting at the Metropolitan Hotel in London, Mahmood posed as a film producer and plied Miss Contostavlos with alcohol as they discussed an acting role alongside Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio.
As Smith drove the former X Factor judge home to Hertfordshire, she allegedly spoke about a family member who had a drugs problem.
When he was interviewed by police about the journey more than a year later, Smith, of Dereham, Norfolk, recalled the conversation.
But a day later, after speaking to Mahmood and emailing his draft statement, the singer’s anti-drugs comments were removed, the court heard.
At a pre-trial hearing, Mahmood denied being an “agent provocateur” or that he discussed the drugs conversation with Smith.
But when he was questioned at length in the trial, Mahmood appeared to concede he had talked to Smith about what Miss Contostavlos said about drugs in the car.
Neither defendant gave evidence but it was said on Mahmood’s behalf that there had been a “misunderstanding” of his evidence as he was “steamrollered” with multi-faceted questions.
And Miss Contostavlos’s comments in the car would not have stacked up against the “clear and incontrovertible evidence” against her, it was claimed.
Defence lawyer John Kelsey-Fry QC told jurors: “Mr Mahmood is not a policeman. He is a journalist.
“Whilst the prosecution may say he boasts of the number of convictions resulting from his work, securing convictions is not his job.”
He said Mahmood’s whole investigation was about exposing the pop star’s private face “smoking weed” and “arranging cocaine for mates” set against her public persona as a “role model”.
Smith’s lawyer, Trevor Burke, QC, challenged jurors to try to remember, as his client had done, conversations and events a year earlier.
After her case collapsed in July 2014, Miss Contostavlos claimed to reporters she had been the victim of “a horrific entrapment”.
For more than 25 years Mahmood has enjoyed a position as “King of the Sting” at the now-defunct News of the World, Sunday Times and Sun on Sunday, with Smith as his “righthand man”.