THE former chief executive of sports goods company JJB Sports has gone on trial in connection with an alleged £1 million fraud.
Scots-born Christopher Ronnie, 52, from Wilmslow, Cheshire, is accused of receiving three payments from two sporting goods companies and failing to declare them to JJB's board of directors.
Southwark Crown Court heard that Mr Ronnie, originally from Glasgow, used the proceeds of some of the payments, which were hidden in genuine business deals, to buy property in Florida.
Opening the prosecution, which is being brought by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), Miranda Moore QC also said that Mr Ronnie and a second defendant, David Ball, had falsified information about his assets and liabilities over loans he owed to an Icelandic bank from when he bought shares in JJB Sports. The court heard that in total Mr Ronnie owed £11 million to Icelandic bank Kaupthing Singer Friedlander.
Mr Ball and a third man, David Barrington - who both worked for two firms supplying stock to JJB Sports - are also accused of covering up emails relating to the loans.
Miss Moore told the court the pair asked a computer engineer to wipe any trace of the emails, but he was so concerned about what he found he kept a copy for himself and contacted the SFO.
She said: "The allegation is that during the period of his tenure he or his company, Seacroft Management Ltd, received three payments totalling just over £1m.
"It is how he came to receive those payments, why, what they represented and whether there is a link, as we say there is, to what was going on at the time that we are going to have to consider."
Miss Moore told the court Mr Ronnie's company Seacroft received a payment of £650,000 in February 2008 from Performance Brands, a sports goods supplier with which Ball and Barrington were both associated.
In June that year he was said to have received money from a second supplier the pair were linked to, Fashion and Sport, a payment of $380,000, about £197,000. A third payment, again from Fashion and Sport, was allegedly made to Ronnie in November 2008, this time of $250,000, about £134,000.
Miss Moore told the court that at the time of the payments, both Performance Brands and Fashion and Sport were involved in business deals with JJB Sports.
She said: "It is the Crown's case that the payments that went over to Mr Ronnie were connected to transactions between JJB Sports and the companies related to the other two defendants at the time.
"If there hadn't been these transactions between JJB and Performance Brands and Fashion and Sport they wouldn't have had the money to be able to give the money to Mr Ronnie."
She added: "We say he (Ronnie) had an interest that he should have disclosed to his board, and he failed to do so.
"He didn't take that opportunity because he wanted to keep the money for himself."
Mr Ronnie, who was JJB Sports chief executive between August 2007 and March 2009, is charged with three counts of fraud in relation to failing to disclose interests in contracts entered into by the JJB Sports.
He is also charged with two money laundering offences and two counts of furnishing false information.
Mr Ball, 54, from Sutton, Surrey, an accountant and supplier to JJB, is charged with three offences of furnishing false information and two counts of perverting the course of justice.
His business partner, David Barrington, 52, from Sale, Cheshire, is charged with two counts of perverting the course of justice.
The three men deny all the charges against them. The trial continues.
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