Bookie Majeed pleads guilty in spot-fixing trial, accepts paying bribe to trio

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 handing over 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 today 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. [caption id=“attachment_121931” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“AFP”] [/caption] Majeed, who also appeared at the court today 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 today, 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 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 today, prosecutor Aftab Jafferjee applied for a compensation order to repay the 150,000 pound sterling ($240,000) that an undercover reporter from the now-defunct ‘News of the World’ tabloid Mazhar Mehmood gave to Majeed. The money 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. His barrister explained to Justice Cooke that his client would not be giving evidence. Judge Cooke, however, said that text messages sent from murky contacts in Pakistan suggested the talented youngster was also implicated in fixing during the preceding Test at The Oval. “There are certainly texts and the like which suggest that Amir’s first and only involvement was not limited to Lord’s, it was not an isolated and one-off event,” Cooke said. Blaxland pointed out that he had handed the judge a 19-page file of mitigation. Subsequently, a recess was called at 11.30 local time to allow the judge enough time to read the file. PTI