Sports Betting Corruption Trial

Butt and Asif accused of corruption on basis of 'guess work', court hearsDefence pleads not to assume Pakistan cricketers guilty of fixing slots of Test match, as prosecution points to 'facts and evidence'
Matt Scott The Guardian

Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif have been accused of "deceit, greed and corrupt practice" on the basis of "coincidence, innuendo and guesswork" a court heard on Monday.

Butt, the former Pakistan captain, and Asif, who was last year ranked the world's second-best bowler, deny involvement in a conspiracy to cheat at gambling and to accept corrupt payments over no-balls bowled at Lord's during the fourth Test between England and Pakistan last year.

In his defence Butt's counsel, Ali Bajwa QC, told the jury that the prosecution had "thrown everything it can at its case, tearing apart Butt's life, but had done so by employing an assumption of guilt".

"We have a fantastic sense of justice in this country," said Bajwa. "We have a foreigner on trial and it is his good fortune that it is in this country. All manner of cases are based upon innuendo, pressure and assumption [and] so much has been thrown at you with coincidence, innuendo, guesswork.

"But we are asking you to uphold the proud tradition of juries. There simply is not enough evidence to give a true verdict to say he [Salman Butt] is guilty."

Aftab Jafferjee QC, for the prosecution, however, pointed to 13 "facts" that, he told the court, condemn both Butt and Asif. Chief among them were the facts that Asif delivered a no-ball at precisely the time predicted by Butt's former agent, Mazhar Majeed, and that Mohammad Amir, another Pakistan bowler, had done the same. At the time Butt was the captain and the arbiter of when the bowlers would bowl. Added to this, were what Jafferjee referred to as a "telling triangulation" of telephone traffic between Majeed and the two players on trial.

"Butt has received text messages from Majeed on the subject of fixing," he said, dismissing Butt's description of such messages as "jokes".

Bajwa did not seek to deny that a conspiracy had taken place, only that his client had not been part of it. "There is no dispute in this case that there was at the very minimum a fix between Majeed and Amir." Bajwastressed the weight given by the prosecution to the words of Majeed, whom he likened to an untrustworthy second-hand-car salesman. He pointed out that Majeed had been on the edge of bankruptcy at the time the alleged crimes took place, owing £704,000.

This, said Bajwa, gave Majeed "an incentive to exaggerate to impress" when speaking to an undercover journalist, a man he had been led to believe was a wealthy Indian businessman interested in betting on fixed events at cricket matches.

In his closing speech to the jury, Jafferjee picked on one secretly recorded exchange between Butt and Majeed. The discussion between player and agent came while the journalist - the News of the World's fake sheikh, Mazher Mahmood was discussing ways of proving that Majeed had "control" over his players.

Jafferjee said of that telephone conversation: "Everything Butt says is confirmation. Every word that is uttered, entirely confirmatory of an understanding."

Bajwa responded: "The transcripts do need to be read very carefully. You can take them superficially, in which case your verdict will be very easy. But you need to read between the lines and a very different version of Majeed and of this case begins to emerge."

Jafferjee exhorted the jury to consider the cricketers' activities in plain terms. "This is a case of corruption through the vehicle of a sport. It is no different to a fraudster [manipulating] markets and saying, 'You do not understand the markets.' You the jury do understand deceit, greed and corrupt practice by some on the inside who are lucky enough, through talent, to have the opportunity to exploit it." The trial continues.