Accountant who gave gangster false alibi is jailed for 3 years for perjury
AN accountant who gave a gang member a false alibi was yesterday jailed for three years.
David MacFarlane, 61, swore under oath that David Sell was at his home when the violent thug was actually torturing someone over a drug debt.
The accountant insisted he knew the date they were together was May 11, 2015 – because it was also his sister’s birthday.
Sell, 51 – a member of what was described as Scotland’s ‘most sophisticated organised crime gang’ – later pleaded guilty to his part in the abduction and ‘merciless’ torture and MacFarlane was charged with perjury.
During a trial at the High Court in Glasgow, MacFarlane denied deliberately lying and claimed he had been ‘mistaken’ about the date of Sell’s visit to his then flat in Thorntonhall, Lanarkshire.
But he was found guilty last month after a trial and returned to court yesterday for sentencing.
Judge Lord Clark told MacFarlane: ‘There is no suggestion you had any involvement in this brutal and violent offence but you said on oath he was at your home that day and said you knew because it was your sister’s birthday.
‘Your position at trial was that you had made a mistake. However, the jury concluded you had deliberately given false evidence on oath. As it turned out this had no impact on the case as the accused pled guilty.
‘Perjury must be dealt with severely. When an oath is taken to tell the truth, that is what must be done.’
MacFarlane, of Newton Mearns, near Glasgow, claimed an ‘agitated’ Sell turned up at his former home and told him he had been ‘threatened by two Irishmen’. The accountant claimed that Sell, who was one of his clients, spent the night and left the next morning.
Sell was later charged with being involved in an attack in which a man was shot in the legs over a drug debt. MacFarlane told the trial he was contacted by Sell’s lawyer about their meeting.
This led to the accountant giving a legal ‘precognition’ under oath at Hamilton Sheriff Court in September 2017, when he insisted Sell turned up on March 11, 2015.
He said: ‘He said that he had been having problems but I did not want to know. He said that he had been threatened.’
But only months later, Sell pleaded guilty and was jailed for almost 16 years.
The crime occurred on the day MacFarlane had claimed to have been with Sell.
Defence QC Donald Findlay told the court: ‘Mr MacFarlane got caught up in something which was not of his making.
‘He goes out of his way to help other people. By helping Mr Sell he ends up here. It is a sad matter for him. This is not a man who poses a risk to the public.’
‘Must be dealt with severely’