London: Bookmaker Mazhar Majeed, the agent of three Pakistan cricketers convicted for spot-fixing, has pleaded guilty to his involvement in the betting scam and admitted the handing over of 77,000 pounds sterling to the trio.
Majeed, 36, admitted conspiracy to cheat and to obtain and accept corrupt payments during a pre-trial hearing in September but that fact could not be reported till Wednesday due to court restrictions.
Judge Jeremy Cooke, who is set to pronounce the quantum of sentences on the three players at Southwark Crown Court, lifted reporting restrictions on publication of Majeed’s guilty pleas.
Majeed, who also appeared at the court on Wednesday after pacer Mohammad Amir did the same, now faces sentencing along with the three players.
With the sentencing hearing having begun on the 21st day of the trial on Wednesday, Majeed’s lawyer also revealed his client handed 77,000 pound sterlings to the three players.
The figures he was asked to distribute were: 2,500 pound sterling to Amir, 10,000 to Butt and 65,000 to Asif.
Asif was paid the larger amount to guarantee that he remained loyal to the fixing racket within the team and was not persuaded to go elsewhere, Majeed’s lawyer said.
He also said that Majeed was first introduced to talk about fixing by by Butt over dinner during the 2009 Twenty20 World Cup in England.
Butt and strike bowler Mohammad Asif were found guilty by a jury yesterday. Like Majeed, teenage swing bowler Mohammad Amir admitted the charges in September, but his guilty plea could not be reported during the trial of Butt and Asif.
In the court on Wednesday, prosecutor Aftab Jafferjee applied for a compensation order to repay the 150,000 pound sterling ($240,000, 175,000 euros) that an undercover reporter from the now-defunct News of the World tabloid Mazhar Mehmood gave to Majeed.
The money, paid in cash, was handed over to Majeed as part of an arrangement to rig cricket matches, including the no-balls delivered during the Test between Pakistan and England at Lord’s in August 2010.
Earlier in the day, all the three Pakistan players found guilty of spot-fixing appeared together for the first time in the court with Amir turning up for a special hearing.
Amir, who had pleaded guilty at a pre-trial to bowling two pre-determined no-balls at the Lord’s Test last year, appeared at the court with his barrister Henry Blaxland QC as the sentencing process began. (PTI)