The journalist who exposed the Bruce Grobbelaar football bungs scandal has been brought to trial over an alleged backhander for an article he didn’t even write, a court has been told.
Former Sun reporter John Troup was in an undercover operation exposing a breach of security in a London tax office, the day the story was written, jurors were told by his counsel.
William Clegg QC, asked the jury to consider what justice there was in bringing Troup, who had worked at the paper for 16 years, to trial.
The prosecution had found an email requesting £300 cash to the four-paragraph story, headlined “Hitman hanging”, written by another reporter.
This was supposedly part of a massive culture of corruption at the Sun which involved “wheelbarrows of cash” for stories, according to the prosecution, which is trying six current and former journalists over alleged kickbacks to public officials.
Troup has been accused of asking for £300 for an unnamed prison officer for the story. He has testified he did not remember writing the email and does now know the identify of the prison officer, if indeed it was a prison officer.
“He [the prosecutor] had talked about wheelbarrows of cash. The only payment over all the years that John Troup worked for the Sun was one payment for £300 – not even enough for a toy one, my grandson hopes to get for Christmas,” said Clegg.
He said the fact that the prosecution case was brought does not mean it is fair.
“He worked for the Sun for approx 6,000 days and when we turn to count eight, his alleged criminality is alleged to cover 16 days.
“The other 5,894 days there is no suggestion, no allegation, that he has done anything improper at all, quite the reverse.”
In his closing speech at Kingston Crown Court, jurors were told Troup had not written the article.
The prosecution had jumped on the fact that Troup had not said this in his defence case statement, branding his new position as “selective amnesia” as he now “remembered” he had not written the article.
But Clegg says, this was because he couldn’t remember this until later investigations revealed he was out of the office that day on another story which was splashed across pages 12 and 13 of the Sun. There were no emails from him sending the story into the office and a phone call about the prison suicide was made by a fellow reporter Simon Hughes.
“This is not someone lying to you, this is someone trying to piece together what happened This is not selective amnesia, it is genuine amnesia,” said Clegg.
The trial continues.
