Appeal judges inquiring into allegations that British detectives "sat on" information about a plot to nobble the foreman of the 1990 Guinness trial jury were today faced with a direct conflict of evidence between police witnesses.
Two junior officers told the Court of Appeal inn London that intelligence from an underworld informer, to the effect that a criminal relative of the juror was looking at making a "sizeable" amount of money if a deal could be arranged, was passed on to police superiors.
But the senior officers involved, both now retired, flatly denied ever having received the information and rejected suggestions that they kept quiet about it and failed in their duty to pass it on to Crown prosecutors and the trial judge.
Former detective chief superintendent Joseph McStravick, acting commander of the Fraud Squad at the time of the trial, said it was "regrettable" that the matter was not brought to his attention, otherwise he would have taken the appropriate action.
And the officer in charge of the Guinness inquiry, detective chief superintendent Richard Botwright, said the suggestion he knew that one of the jurors might have been corrupt and did nothing about it was "completely absurd and surreal".
Their evidence was in direct contradiction to the testimony of detective constables Colin Perry and Craig Allam, both still serving police officers, who swore that the potentially vital tip-off was passed on and denied that it was they who sat on the information in order to keep their informant to themselves.
The court is hearing a fresh appeal by the "Guinness Four" - Ernest Saunders, Gerald Ronson, Jack Lyons and Anthony Parnes - against their convictions in 1990 over an allegedly illegal scheme to boost the value of Guinness shares in the run-up to its £2.6 billion takeover of Distillers in 1986.
PA