Legal arguments began this week at London’s Snaresbrook Crown Court in
the long-running case against Renny Platt, the former Saatchi and
Saatchi joint head of facilities, and three other men accused in an
alleged pounds 2.5 million fraud against Jaguar Motors.
The trial, which opened on Monday and is expected to last eight weeks,
went straight into secret legal arguments from the defence classified as
‘abuse of process’ arguments. The case proper is expected to resume
later this week.
The charges arise from a Metropolitan Police investigation in 1992 into
the awarding of contracts for the reprinting and translating of Jaguar
handbooks and workshop manuals and the submission of allegedly faked
invoices to the company.
Platt, 51, a company director from Beaconsfield, is alleged to have
taken part in the fraud along with Roger Fielding, 43, a former Jaguar
executive from Warwickshire, and Roger Parker, 61, retired, of Coventry.
The list also includes Roger Kennedy, 51, a company director from Kent
(not to be confused with the head of typography at Saatchis, who bears
the same name but is completely unconnected with the case).
All four face two charges of conspiring to defraud Jaguar between
January 1987 and June 1991 by submitting false invoices.
Fielding, Parker and Platt face two similar charges and Fielding and
Parker alone face yet another.
In addition, Fielding, Parker and Platt face corruption charges and
Platt and Kennedy are also charged with false accounting, which involved
falsifying documents and invoices for typesetting and translation jobs.
