I’ll sue the Fake Sheikh too, says ex-England boss Sven
FORMER England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson yesterday said he will join the celebrities suing discredited undercover journalist Mazher Mahmood.
The Swedish football coach said being caught up in one of the notorious ‘Fake Sheikh’ stings cost him the ‘biggest job of my life’.
The 68-year-old left his England post weeks after being secretly recorded trying to persuade the journalist to buy Aston Villa and put him in charge.
‘That man was a disaster for my professional life – England was the biggest job of my life, and he took it away from me,’ Eriksson said.
His claim that the sting cost him his job may raise eyebrows. His team had suffered an embarrassing loss to Northern Ireland.
There were also revelations of his affairs with FA secretary Faria Alam and TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson while he was in a relationship with Nancy Dell’Olio. The manager, now working in the Chinese Super League at Shanghai SIPG, is one of the most high-profile names to take legal action against Mahmood.
More than 20 sports stars, celebrities, business people and others are seeking damages.
A further eight are bidding to get convictions overturned.
The legal claims were triggered by the collapse of pop singer Tulisa Contostavlos’s trial for supplying drugs in July 2014.
On Wednesday at the Old Bailey, Mahmood was found guilty of perverting the course of justice by trying to alter a formal police statement.
Eriksson met Mahmood – posing as the owner of a football academy – for a £1,700 dinner at a Dubai restaurant in January 2006. Eriksson asked him to take over Aston Villa, where he wanted to become manager, and said he would try to sign then-England captain David Beckham, who was playing for Real Madrid at the time. Mahmood said Eriksson accused managers of taking bungs, attacked his players and boasted of his sexual exploits. Within weeks of publication, the FA announced Eriksson would be leave the England job after that year’s World Cup.
Both parties denied the News of the World story played a role. Yesterday Eriksson told Sky Sports News that Mahmood, 53, who will be sentenced on October 21, ‘should be in prison’. He said: ‘I would probably have been sacked anyway if England didn’t win the World Cup in 2006.
‘But in fact, I was sacked because of the Fake Sheikh, 90 per cent of what he said about me was lies. The newspaper apologised six months later, but it was too late by then – I’d lost the biggest job of my life, and my reputation was in tatters.’
At least 18 people caught up in Mahmood’s stings have consulted lawyer Mark Lewis, who believes News UK could face up to 50 claims – and have to pay out £800million in damages.
He believes Mahmood was guilty of entrapment, plying targets with alcohol then offering huge incentives to supply drugs. Among Mr Lewis’s clients are London’s Burning star John Alford and former Page Three model Emma Morgan. Both were caught selling cocaine.
John Bryan, who was famously caught on camera sucking Sarah Ferguson’s toes, has made a huge claim in the US.
The Duchess of York is seeking a multi-million pound payout in papers lodged privately at the Royal Courts of Justice.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission is considering six cases including Alford and Pakistan cricket spot-fixer Mazhar Majeed. Two more are expected to be lodged within weeks.
The Fake Sheikh controversy may lead to a crackdown on undercover investigations by journalists, a former top prosecutor warned yesterday. Nazir Afzal, who led the Crown Prosecution Service in the North West, suggested the law could be changed to stop reporters using entrapment tactics.