A BUSINESSMAN involved in the failed takeover of a North-East football club has denied acting dishonestly when he got the gate receipts diverted to his own company.

Stephen Murrall told a jury he believed he would be able to pay back a £50,000 loan he is alleged to have fraudulently obtained to replace the Hartlepool United gate cash.

At the time, he and Peter Harris were trying to convince the Football League they were ‘fit and proper persons’ to run the then-struggling League Two club, Warwick Crown Court has heard.

The two men have pleaded not guilty to fraud by making false representations in January 2015 that they needed funds to satisfy the Football League before they could get approval to buy the club, and that they had access to a further £200,000.

Murrall, 49, of Mill Court, Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire, and Harris, 47, of Compton Court, Shipston-on-Stour, deny two more fraud charges, and Murrall also denies two charges of making false statements with intent to defraud HM Revenue and Customs.

Prosecutor Miranda Moore QC said the two men set up a company called TMH 2014 Ltd, referencing the club nickname of the Monkey Hangers, for the takeover.

In December 2014 an agreement was signed with Hartlepool United’s CEO Russell Green for TMH to buy the club for £5, but they had to meet Football League conditions by January 31, 2015 before they could become the official owners.

Without waiting for that, the club’s finance officer was directed to pay all future money from home matches, including gate receipts and the bar revenue into TMH’s bank account.

A total of £42,453 from the next two home games was paid into the TMH account, but it did not stay there – and the League wanted to know the two men were good for the money.

Giving evidence, Murrall said he had met Mr Green at a hotel in Leicester, and it was agreed the club would be sold by its owners IOR Ltd for £5, with its debts being wiped off by IOR.

Asked who gave the instruction for the gate money to go into an account controlled by him and Harris, he said: “I did.”

He said: “The Hartlepool account was managed by IOR, but no-one had access to utilise it, and money had to be paid, for example if there was an away game, for hotel bills and so on.”

But he said that in the New Year he had a call from IOR’s solicitors to say that the money would have to go back into the club’s account to satisfy the Football League.

So he approached Jonathan Rehbein from the ESRG Group who agreed to make a short-term loan of £50,000 after being assured TMH had access to £200,000.

Murrall insisted that was true, because there was around £197,000 in IOR’s Hartlepool account, which would have become available once the handover had taken place.

He agreed that to extend the loan period for the £50,000, letters that were "clearly forgeries" were presented purporting to show he had €1m in a Maltese account – but claimed another person had put him under duress to do so.

Another of the alleged frauds involved an earlier loan of £500,000 which had been negotiated with Mr Rehbein for supposed projects on Malta – first involving electric vehicles and then a plant to convert waste into energy.

That loan had been secured thanks to a written agreement and contract purported to have been signed by Malta’s minister for inward investment, Dr Christian Cardona, and a forged letter from accountants Ernst and Young supposedly underwriting the project.

Murrall accepted generating those documents himself and forging Dr Cardona’s signature on the agreement and contract.

But Murrall, who spent some of the £500,000 on gambling and to cover bills for a night club he was refurbishing, insisted: “My case is, I didn’t think I behaved dishonestly.

“I provided what I thought everyone accepted they wanted for their files. I was told: ‘Just provide that and bung a signature on it. It’s for his file, he’s not going to check it’.”

Murrall is also accused of submitting false invoices to reclaim VAT, false invoices to obtain money from a factoring company, and statements and invoices to HMRC in a bid to obtain almost £900,000 in research and development payable tax credit – but denied acting dishonestly in respect of those allegations.

The trial continues.