Stephen Leggett and partner in crime Mark Diaper allegedly funnelled bungs to dodgy maintenance operator Richard Cullen to hand them lucrative jobs using taxpayers’ cash.
As the contracts started to roll in, Diaper told Cullen – a ‘custodian of public money’ – to ‘Keep them coming, let’s get the money in the bank’ and ‘Let’s keep this party going,’ jurors were told.
But warning that the three men should not get ‘greedy’, the New Forest District Council worker, who received more than £25,000 in bungs for providing the ‘roofing dollar’, used a story popularised by TV gangster Tony Soprano, boasting that the scam could keep going for a decade.
Leggett, 50, made an ‘awful lot more than he had ever previously received in his career’ after arranging the bribes to secure contracts from NFDC, prosecutors allege.
In total he pocketed nearly £375,000 from the scam, Southampton Crown Court was told.
Prosecutor Denis Barry told the court: “Together with a man called Mr Diaper, Mr Leggett paid monies to Mr Cullen.
“The reason was that he wanted to get work from New Forest District Council – Mr Cullen was bribed in order to get that work.
“[Leggett] paid this money to Mr Cullen because he wanted to get work from NFDC,” he continued.
Cullen, a Maintenance Operative Officer, was required to be ‘proactive’ in ensuring properties were well maintained on his patch, the court heard.
Mr Barry added: “He was the custodian of the public money in this case, and was therefore the person who was in the position of trust as far as the rate payers of the New Forest were concerned.”
Leggett, of Southampton, was the director of Alltype Roofing, and hired council worker Mark Diaper as a subcontractor after he left NFDC in April 2018.
The court heard when maintenance officers source jobs, they were required to use a company within the approved list.
Cullen added Alltype Roofing to that list in July 2018 – and around this time, Diaper sent Cullen a message saying they needed to meet because he had a ‘good opportunity for us both’.
Cullen sent the first purchase order over to the company for roofing work by August 1, 2018, the court heard.
Jurors were read messages from the jubilant three men after this first payment was received, as Cullen told Diaper the good news alongside a smiley face emoji.
Leggett then texted Diaper saying ‘Yea f***ing har mate’, before informing him he was ‘down for £400 for each one’, to which he replied ‘sounds lovely to me mate, thank you’.
The next week, Diaper messaged Cullen expressing his hopes the weather – which was very wet – would ‘bring in some jobs’, as Cullen told him he was ‘watching new enquiries like a hawk’.
As more jobs were approved in August 2018, Diaper told Cullen, ‘My man keep them coming bud let’s get the money in the bank’.
Mr Barry told jurors there was ‘no good reason’ Cullen should have been receiving money from a roofing company for simply doing his job as a public servant.
When Cullen told Diaper – who made £125,000 in total from the scam – he had approved over £17,000 worth of work, he said ‘let’s keep this party going bud’.
Messages showed Cullen then asking how much ‘roofing dollar’ was coming his way.
Mr Barry said as things developed in September 2018, Cullen told Diaper ‘the only thing that will fuck it up is us’ and said they ‘mustn’t get too greedy’, before providing a ‘homely’ analogy.
In a message to Diaper, Cullen said: “Mate the reason it works with you me & Steve is no one’s greedy.
“You & I both need this extra income and it can go on for the next 10 years.
“Do you know the fable about billy the bull says to daddy bull …Dad let’s run down the hill & f*** one of them cows… Daddy bull says to billy bull no lad let’s walk down the hill & f*** all of them.”
In the first series of The Sopranos, mob boss Tony Soprano tells the same story to his Uncle Junior as he tries to persuade him to be less greedy.
The court heard by November 2018 payments for Cullen had become ‘quite large’ as they went ‘up and up and up’ as ‘more and more’ work was allocated.
In January 2019, thanks to a contract worth nearly £25,000, Mr Barry said Cullen was handed £2,500, or about 10 per cent, but became ‘a little bit concerned’ about how he was going to justify such spending.
After money had been ‘moving between’ the three individuals, suspicion was aroused at the council’s bi-monthly account meeting in January 2019 when an ‘gigantic spike’ in expenditure was detected and an investigation launched.
In 2017/18 Cullen’s spending had been £285,286, but in 2018/19 this ‘shot up’ to over £700,000.
Mr Barry said: “A lot of that money went to Mr Leggett’s company and it went there because he had bribed Mr Cullen.”
During that time, Alltype roofing had sent NFDC 118 invoices totalling £407,373.
After other performance issues at work – where he was found asleep at his desk – Cullen was suspended in January 2019 and eventually dismissed from the council in May 2019.
The NFDC investigation found 113 Alltype Roofing jobs had been initiated by Cullen.
Mr Barry said: “Mr Cullen is asking them to do an awful lot of jobs on his patch and that is because he’s being bribed.
“Mr Leggett received £374,236 during the relevant period – that was an awful lot more than he had ever previously received in his career as a roofer.”
Leggett was interviewed in December 2019 and denied paying money to Cullen or contacting him, but Mr Barry said payments matched up in the two individuals bank accounts.
Mr Barry said Leggett made a ‘Freudian slip’ in interview where he claimed ignorance of Cullen making money from the work, but inadvertently called payments his ‘cut’, before correcting himself.
“[Leggett]’s case in essence is that he was not involved in the criminality of the other two, and did not know what they were up to,” he added.
“You can be sure he was involved with them – he wanted the extra work.
“[Cullen] ended up with £25,575 worth of corrupt payments.
“Leggett knew it was – it was a series of bribes, and you can be sure of it.”
The court heard Cullen and Diaper have already admitted their part of the bribery at a previous court hearing.
Leggett denies one count of bribery.
The trial continues.
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