Spurs lawyers received Karren Brady phone records in March, court told

 

The row over the Olympic stadium and Karren Brady's phone records continues in the high court. Photograph: Westfield Group/PA Wire/PA

The illegally acquired phone records of West Ham United's vice-chair, Karren Brady, were passed to Tottenham Hotspur's lawyers in early March, it has emerged, although the club continues to argue that it did not receive copies itself and had no use for them in any case.

At a high court hearing on Wednesday lawyers for Brady and West Ham won an order requiring accountants PKF, hired by Spurs to conduct "due diligence" on the acrimonious bidding process for the Olympic Stadium, to hand over "unlawfully obtained" copies of Brady's itemised phone bills.

Justice Coulson said that "in a meeting on March 4 2011, a copy of the records was provided to Olswang, legal advisers to Tottenham Hotspur". The meeting took place around three weeks after the Olympic Park Legacy Company had awarded the Olympic Stadium to West Ham following an acrimonious bidding process.

Olswang was gathering material for a possible judicial review, which eventually reached court in October but was then halted in its tracks when the government and the OPLC pulled the plug on their deal with West Ham and Newham council in the face of delays caused by legal challenges from Spurs and Leyton Orient.

Although their lawyers held a copy of the records, Spurs maintain that they were not passed on to the club and that directors had no use for them in any case, because they were aware that contact between OPLC board members and bidders was encouraged under the tender process. The records are believed to show details of phone calls between Brady and OPLC board members, including the chief executive Andrew Altman.

In his witness statement the Spurs finance director Matthew Collecott said: "I understand [DKF partner Howard] Hill produced Brady's phone records to Olswang. When asked he confirmed they had been received anonymously. Olswang confirm they made it clear to Mr Hill it was imperative that all investigations were carried out within the law."

According to Coulson, Collecott confirmed that PKF was engaged in February to carry out "due diligence" on the process. Spurs were concerned details of their tender for the Olympic Stadium had been leaked.

West Ham's counsel, Ben Jaffey, said his reading of Collecott's desciption of the sequence of the events was that Hill was being painted as a "rogue agent" who had "exceeded his authority". Both PKF and Hill claim not to know where the phone bills came from, saying they had been sent anonymously.

"I did not attach any significance to Howard Hill's reference to receiving telephone records," said Collecott. "In any event they would have been of absolutely no relevance to me because I (and indeed any other director) was entitled to call OPLC board members and so was Ms Brady. Telephone contact between the bidders and members of the OPLC was actually encouraged under the rules applicable to the bid, as anyone who is part of the process would realise."

The case notes outline how an individual calling themselves "Thomas Brady" with a fictional West Ham email address had managed to obtain Brady's itemised Vodafone mobile phone bills from its customer services department.

Jaffey said that PKF claimed not to know where the documents had come from and said that its partner Howard Hill had claimed the telephone records arrived "in the proverbial brown envelope".

Spurs strongly deny they had any part in the acquisition of the telephone records, or subsequently saw them, or had any interest in doing so while PKF claim the documents were sent to them anonymously.

Howard Hill, a PKF partner, has admitted passing the records to the Sunday Times, which used them as part of the basis for an article in June. Hill apologised to the Spurs chairman, Daniel Levy, after the Sunday Times article appeared, the court was told.

Last week, the judge had described how West Ham and Brady were given the "traditional runaround" by Spurs and PKF as they attempted to establish whether the phone bills existed and who had access to them. According to the agreement reached on Wednesday, PKF must supply Brady and West Ham copies of the phone records and any documents based on the information contained therein.