Shayler jury hears of newspaper payments

Thousands of pounds paid by a national newspaper to David Shayler, the former MI5 officer, after he provided it with secret documents, was dispersed in a number of different bank accounts, an Old Bailey jury heard yesterday.

The Mail on Sunday gave him nearly £40,000 in August 1997 when it published a series of articles disclosing how MI5 bugged the former cabinet minister Peter Mandelson, kept files on the foreign secretary Jack Straw and on John Lennon, and pursued a suspected Libyan intelligence officer.

Some was paid into a Guernsey account of Annie Machon, his girlfriend who is also a former MI5 officer, and into accounts of two of his friends and one of his brothers, the jury was told. Mr Shayler received £5,000 in cash.

The paper paid for the flight of Mr Shayler and Ms Machon to Amsterdam the day before the articles appeared, as well as their hotel bills, the court heard. Seven months later, the court has heard, the Mail on Sunday handed back to MI5 hundreds of pages of classified documents with Mr Shayler's fingerprints on them.

Mr Shayler is charged with three counts of breaching the Official Secrets Act. He denies the charges.

Details of his financial dealings were revealed by Nigel Sweeney QC, for the prosecution. He said he simply wanted to show that Mr Shayler had disclosed the documents without authority, not to imply any motive on Mr Shayler's part.

"In the end what happened to the money is irrelevant," he said. It was relevant only to show that he was the discloser. "Otherwise why pay him?"

Mr Sweeney repeatedly told the jury that any motive Mr Shayler had in disclosing the documents was irrelevant to the issues in the case. Equally, he said, in law the prosecution did not have to prove whether any of Mr Shayler's allegations were "true or false".

Mr Sweeney took the jury through a file of highly classified documents he said Mr Shayler had disclosed to the newspaper. The file has been given to the jury which has been told by the trial judge, Mr Justice Moses, not to discuss the contents with anyone else.

One document referred to Peter Bleach, a British arms dealer now in a Calcutta jail. Another referred to the Lockerbie disaster.

Mr Sweeney repeatedly told the court he just wanted to give a "flavour" of the kind of documents Mr Shayler had disclosed. But he said the prosecution did not have to prove that every one contained information relating to security and intelligence. "Just one would be enough," he said.

The court heard that Mr Shayler had told the police he had returned to Britain voluntarily in August 2000 after living three years in France "to clear my name and and to allow a jury of 12 of my fellow citizens to judge me".

He added: "I have also returned to challenge the cover-ups and complacency that have followed my disclosures ... Any disclosures made by me were made in the public interest. I will rely on my right of freedom of expression as guaranteed by the common law [and], the Human Rights Act."

Mr Sweeney has told the jury that in law, Mr Shayler has no such defence.

The trial continues.