JAGUAR Cars was systematically cheated out of hundreds of thousands of pounds in a four-year conspiracy involving two of its own publicity managers, a court was told yesterday.
``Trusted'' managers Roger Fielding, 43, and Ronald Parker, 61, took vast bribes from Reynard Platt, 51, in return for fraudulent contracts, said Mr David Bate QC, prosecuting at Snaresbrook Crown Court, central London.
Fielding, until recently an Edinburgh resident, Parker, and Platt have admitted conspiracy to commit corruption. A fourth defendant, Mr Roger Kennedy, 51, is alone in the dock denying conspiracy to defraud Jaguar.
Mr Bate said Jaguar first had to be defrauded to provide the ``engine and the driving force for the bribes''.
Mr Kennedy and his West London-based firm, Nova Arts Ltd, are accused of acting as a money-launderer for Platt, who was the company director of the Facilites Group, a subsidiary of advertising giant Saatchi and Saatchi.
Platt also headed Number 32, which carried out all typesetting and translation work for Jaguar.
Mr Bate told jurors that for four years, between 1987 and 1991, ``two of their trusted senior employees were systematically defrauding Jaguar on a large scale''.
He said Fielding and Parker ensured that contracts for the translation of Jaguar publications went to Platt and Mr Kennedy and others, and used false invoices to overcharge the car firm massively.
Mr Bate said that once Jaguar paid up, large sums of money were then paid by way of bribes to Fielding and Parker and then the whole system would be repeated.
The prosecution claims Mr Kennedy would create false bills for non-existant work and the money paid to the Nova account would then be siphoned off by Platt for more bribes and to maintain a lifestyle that included horse-owning.
``Kennedy was providing clean money. He was providing money that could not be directly related to Jaguar and what was going on,'' Mr Bate said.
Mr Bate said the scheme was ``pretty enormous'', explaining that he could not put a precise figure on it.
He said that during the four years in which the system operated, Fielding received #334,777, most of it in bribes, in addition to his Jaguar salary of #105,215.
Mr Kennedy, of Edenbridge, Kent, denies conspiracy to defraud Jaguar and a further charge of conspiracy to commit false accounting.
Fielding, of Evesham, Worcestershire, and Parker, of Coventry, have admitted conspiracy to commit corruption.
Fielding originally gave his address as Spottiswood Street, Edinburgh, from where he moved to Bideford-on-Avon, Warwickshire.
Platt, of South Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, admits conspiracy to commit corruption.
Williams, of Teddington, South London, admits conspiracy to defraud Jaguar and conspiracy to commit corruption.
Mr Kennedy's trial continues and is expected to last up to two weeks, after which the other defendants will be sentenced.
The trial continues today.
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