Potato firm boss faces prison for bribing superstore buyer

Andrew Behagg, 60, from food supplier Greenvale, authorised payments in return for lucrative contracts worth millions.

Thousands of pounds of cash in brown envelopes was handed to buyer John Maylam, who splashed out on lavish meals and stays at top London hotels, Croydon Crown Court heard during the trial.

The jury of 10 men and two women took five hours and 45 minutes to convict Behagg, from Chatteris in Cambridgeshire, of one charge of corruption.

Judge Nicholas Ainley said: “For any case of this magnitude a sentence of imprisonment is almost inevitably passed, and a significant one at that.”

Behagg is expected to be sentenced on June 22 at the same court alongside Maylam and Greenvale’s account manager David Baxter, who have both admitted corruption.

The prosecution’s case was that Sainsbury’s was overcharged by a total of £3.8m by the potato supplier. The extra money went into an account, then some of it was channelled to the buyer.

Maylam would incur expenses of £20,000 a month, spending the cash on expensive restaurants and exclusive hotels including Claridge’s and The Dorchester.

The crime was uncovered when a Greenvale employee grew suspicious when he was asked to withdraw £5,000 bundles in £50 notes from a small local bank.

Jurors heard Simon Forster, a group financial accountant, investigated and found payments were being entered into their financial system as “entertaining” expenses and then written off as “raw materials” or storage costs for potatoes at fictitious firms in Spain and the UK.

Mr Forster told the trial that because the local branch of Lloyds they used near their head office in Chatteris was so small, he had to give them prior warning that he was coming to pick up the cash so they could have enough of the high-value notes brought in to pay out.

Behagg told the court Greenvale had a two-year contract, worth £40m a year, to supply 45 per cent of Sainsbury’s UK potatoes at the time of the alleged corruption.

Prosecutor Paul Ozin told Behagg during the trial: “The truth ... is that you knew perfectly well that these were simply corrupt payments to Mr Maylam to buy you better prices.”

Maylam, 44, of Maidstone, Kent, and Baxter, 50, of Market Drayton, Shropshire, were arrested after an external auditor was alerted.