The conviction of Mazhar Mahmood, aka the Fake Sheikh and the King of the Sting, in a London court last Wednesday must have brought joy to many victims of this Pakistani-origin journalist. Among them must certainly be Salman Butt, Mohammed Asif and Mohammed Amir, the Pakistani cricketers who were found guilty of spot fixing in the Lord’s Test in 2010.
Mazhar Mahmood had cajoled Butt to ask the two pacers to overstep the crease on predetermined deliveries, and caught the deal on camera. This evidence worked against them and sent the trio to jail, and almost brought an end to their successful careers.
Mazhar Mahmood, as investigative reporter for the (now defunct) News of the World, used to trap celebrities into committing criminal acts while filming his victims on the sly. Photos would be splashed across the tabloid newspaper, and the police would do the rest. But a jury recently found Mazhar Mahmood guilty of perverting the course of justice. The 53-year-old self-proclaimed “king of the sting” faces jail after he and his driver, Alan Smith, were found to have tampered with evidence in the collapsed drugs trial of the pop star Tulisa Contostavlos.
Mazhar Mahmood and Alan Smith will be sentenced on October 21.
Mazhar Mahmood entrapped Tulisa Contostavlos by posing as a film producer who could get her a role with Titanic star Leonardo DiCaprio. In return, he asked the N-Dubz singer to arrange for some cocaine. Alan Smith initially corroborated this account of events, suppressing Tulisa’s statement that she neither took nor dealt in drugs. During her trial, it was revealed that Alan Smith had later retracted his original statement, causing the case to collapse.
Tulisa had been accused of arranging for Mazhar Mahmood to be sold 800 pounds of cocaine by one of her contacts following an elaborate sting for the Sun on Sunday in May 2013.
Besides the Pakistani cricketers and Tulisa, Mazhar Mahmood’s victims include the Duchess of York, the Countess of Wessex, the former England football manager, Sven-Goran Eriksson, former London’s Burning actor John Alford and a former Page 3 model called Emma Morgan, among others.
Mazhar Mahmood started his career as a boy in Birmingham where he helped his father produce an Urdu newspaper. According to Roy Greenslade, writing in The Guardian, when he was 18, Mahmood exposed family friends for selling pirated videos. He was then hired by a gossip weekly, and went on to become a prize-winning investigative reporter.
Many of his victims, who were jailed and their lives ruined, are planning to bring libel suits against the Fake Sheikh, News of the World and The Sun. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp could face compensation claims that would “dwarf” its 330 million pounds bill for phone-hacking. Mazhar Mahmood’s career has spanned the News of the World, the Sunday Times, and the Sun on Sunday.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission is now reviewing the convictions of six people who were found guilty of offences as a result of evidence provided by Mazhar Mahmood.
American financier John Bryan has already filed a case for libel and invasion of privacy in a Los Angeles court. According to him, Mazhar Mahmood had tried to entrap him by offering him an investment opportunity in a casino, and then asked him to supply prostitutes and drugs.
The Met, too, is in a tight spot. It has emerged that despite at least two warnings about Mazhar Mahmood’s modus operandi, it continued to use evidence supplied by him to arrest and prosecute people with previously unblemished records.
Mazhar Mahmood’s method of working was to persuade easily tricked, and often greedy and ambitious, individuals that he could make it possible to meet the movers and shakers, provided they did him a dodgy favour.
The whole episode raises important questions about responsible journalism. The right of the public to know needs to be balanced against an individual’s right to privacy. Also, luring a gullible person to get involved in a criminal activity which he normally would not get involved in, just to increase the circulation of newspapers is clearly outside the bounds of acceptable behaviour.
