EmailI must admit that I read the News of the World's snooker bribes scandal a week ago and thought how foolish John Higgins must have been to have got involved.
Why agree to fix a couple of frames in exhibition matches for a bribe that, given his overall earnings from the sport, seemed like small beer?
Then again, I couldn't help but notice that the "world exclusive" sting operation was the work of our old friend, Mazher Mahmood (aka the fake sheikh), so I also looked between the lines.
It was patently obvious that Higgins and his manager, Pat Mooney, had been set up. But, on balance, I thought they had convicted themselves too, not least when they discussed (allegedly) how they might conceal the the €300,000 (£261,000) bribe.
I still kept an open mind though, because taped conversations can be skilfully edited to put people in a bad light (and memories of the tape recordings that figured in Mahmood's false Victoria Beckham kidnap story in 2002 always spring to mind).
I also noted yesterday's second instalment in the NoW, which claimed that Higgins had tried to bet on himself during the recent world championship.
But a worried snooker fan contacted me over the weekend to point out a very interesting set of postings by Nick Harris , an experienced sportswriter and investigative journalist who has written for The Independent and the Sunday Times, on his sportingintelligence website. His are eye-opening revelations.
The day after the NoW broke the Higgins story, Harris posted a piece headlined Revealed: the tale behind the snooker sting that leaves Higgins in the fight of his life.
He claimed to have uncovered the mechanics of the NoW's sting, showing the paper's "extraordinary planning" and the high cost of mounting the operation. If true, it does show the extraordinary (and, arguably, disproportionate) lengths that the paper took to entrap Higgins and Mooney.
The pair have been setting up a series of events under the umbrella known as the World Snooker Series (WSS), and it was in that capacity that they were approached.
According to Harris, Mahmood met them by posing as a businessman, Marcus D'Souza, and claiming to be the "senior project co-ordinator" of a fictional company, Alfa Equity.
Mooney was led to believe that Alfa Equity was a subsidiary firm of a real company, Alfa Bank, which is Russia's largest private commercial bank. Alfa Equity isn't a subsidiary because it doesn't exist.
But the paper and/or Mahmood created a website for this fake company, Alfa Equity, which has since been taken down from the web. However, Harris obtained screen grabs of the site, and you can see them here.
The home page blurb described Alfa Equity as "one of Russia's largest privately owned financial-industrial conglomerates, with interests in oil and gas, mining, commercial and investment banking, asset management, insurance, retail trade, telecommunications, media, water supply and water disposal, as well as other industrial-trade and special-situation investments."
All this is untrue, but Harris says this was "key to establishing Mooney's trust in the operation." Similarly, the website claimed Alfa had acquired a (fictional) Chinese clothing firm, a company said to be seeking marketing opportunities via sporting events.
This false story about the Chinese firm was placed on the website next to other (true) stories about other firms, wholly unrelated to Alfa but linked so as to seem as if they were associated. (Harris has many more details of the website's content in his 3 May posting).
Anyway, Harris says D'Souza/Mahmood approached Mooney via email to say he worked for Alfa Equity, and they met twice in Edinburgh to talk about specifics. These were long and detailed meetings, and Mooney clearly taken in because he is understood to have had formal agreements for exhibition snooker events drawn up with a London law firm.
Higgins did not meet D'Souza/Mahmood until - after being surprisingly beaten early in the world championship - he flew with Mooney to Kiev (courtesy of the NoW), where the covert recordings were made that form the basis of the paper's story.
By this time the NoW squad had enlarged to include more Alfa staff, men named "Jaroslav" and "Nikail" (possibly Mikhail).
There are some important facts to digest: no money changed hands and nothing was signed. Even the article itself had to concede that Higgins had never been involved in match fixing (if so, incidentally, what was the prima facie evidence that persuaded Mahmood to carry out such an elaborate and costly string operation?)
As I suspected, and as is always the case with a Mahmood scoop, there is much more to the story behind the story.
I am not saying that Higgins and Mooney are entirely innocent. (In hindsight, as with all the victims of con-tricks, they certainly look foolish). And they do say things that, on the face of it, look highly suspicious. They also need to explain all sorts of apparently damning quotes, not least their claim that they were scared.
But any inquiry into their activities, if it is to be fair and just, needs to ensure that investigators obtain the full and truthful story of how the NoW went about its task, which must include obtaining the complete, unedited tapes of the entrapment.
We in the media ought also to ask about the proportionality and high cost of the subterfuge. Many thousands were spent on the elaborate entrapment.
For good measure, Harris has also looked closely at yesterday's "shocking new snooker sensation" in the NoW. His analysis can be found here.
PS: There is a Facebook page entitled John Higgins is innocent, with 1,330 names appended thus far.
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