Five men cleared of plotting the kidnap of Victoria Beckham

FIVE men were cleared yesterday of plotting to kidnap Victoria Beckham and ransom her for £5 million.

The case against four Romanians and an Albanian collapsed after the Crown Prosecution Service said the evidence of a key witness was unreliable. The witness, a 27-year-old Kosovan parking attendant with criminal convictions for dishonesty, was paid £10,000 by the News of the World.

The case raised new questions about chequebook journalism and the tainting of trials by payments to witnesses.

Judge Simon Smith, in a hearing at Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court in London, said he was referring the newspaper to the Attorney General, after defence lawyers claimed it had shown "complete contempt for the administration of justice".

The judge said: "I express concern. I am minded to refer the whole of this matter to the Attorney General to consider the temptations which money being offered in return for stories, in particular about celebrities, gives rise to and the way in which newspaper investigations may have a detrimental effect on ultimate court proceedings or may indeed lead to something being placed before people in the way of an inducement."

Sir Christopher Meyer, chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, said the trial's collapse raised "a number of significant issues relating to the administration of justice".

He said: "I will, of course, also speak to the newspaper about all the issues involved. The press Code of Practice has in place tough provisions on payments to both witnesses in criminal trials and to criminals themselves.

"It is crucial that all publications adhere to these, and the PCC will certainly act in any case where a newspaper or magazine is found, after investigation, to have breached them."

The News of the World stood by its handling of the story and issued a statement that it was "surprised" and "perplexed" by the collapse of the case. A spokesman said: "We fully stand by the report published in the newspaper in November last year.

"The story resulted from a thorough and legitimate investigation undertaken by one of the paper's most senior and experienced reporters, a journalist responsible for more than 100 successful convictions. Since November we have co-operated fully with the police leading the inquiry passing on all evidence. On the basis of that evidence, which included video and audio material, the decision was made by the CPS to prosecute. We are therefore perplexed by today's events."

Under PCC guidelines media payments cannot be made to criminals unless it can be shown to be in the public interest.

Last August the Lord Chancellor dropped plans to make it a criminal offence to make payments to witnesses but called for tough new rules to be adopted by newspapers. The PCC promised stronger self-regulation and the tough new rules came into effect in March, five months after the start of the Beckham kidnap case.

The current guidelines allow payment to potential witnesses in criminal trials but only if the payment is made before the police begin to investigate an alleged crime.

A spokesman for the Lord Chancellor's Department said: "This case has not escaped our attention and we will be keeping an eye on it, we are keeping it under review. I don't think anything will change on the back of this because it comes after the PCC's new procedures were put in place.

"The Lord Chancellor has said he is ready to legislate should the revised rules be breached or should increased self-regulation not take place."

As the kidnap case collapsed not guilty verdicts on a charge of conspiracy to kidnap were recorded for Adrian Pasareanu, aged 27, of Green Lane, Morden, South London, Alin Turcu, aged 18, also of Green Lane, Joseph Rivas, aged 24, of Railton Road, Brixton, and Luzim Balliu also known as Azem Krifsha, aged 30, of Watford Close, Battersea Park, South London. A fifth man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was also cleared.

The newspaper's informant was named in court as Florim Gashi, who was in debt and, it was alleged, might have himself instigated the plot to make money from the newspaper.

Gashi told the News of the World that the gang members originally planned to kidnap a Saudi prince but he was too heavily guarded and they chose Victoria Beckham instead, Mr Altman said. They were alleged to have been planning to kidnap her, hopefully with her young sons Brooklyn and Romeo, outside the Beckhams' Hertfordshire home.

It was claimed she would then be held in Brixton, south London, and that they would threaten to kill her unless the ransom was paid.

However, Mr Altman said: "There was no independent objective evidence that a plot to kidnap Victoria Beckham was raised by the defendants rather than Gashi himself. When you realise his parlous financial state at the time, it seems less of a coincidence and unhappily more of a put-up job."

Mr Altman also suggested that the newspaper had not told the police Mrs Beckham was the kidnap target. He said Gashi claimed to have told the newspaper she was the target on October 12 last year. The men were arrested in a car park in London Docklands on November 2 with the newspaper's cameras present and the story was published the following day.

Mr Altman said: "When the News of the World, at a time of its choosing, for the first time disclosed that these defendants were conspiring to kidnap Victoria Beckham, all the police knew was that it was alleged that there was to be a kidnapping. But until then police hadn't been told and simply had no idea who that hostage might be."

Defence lawyer Roy Amlot QC told the court: "If ever there was a lesson, it's the lesson that the dangers involved in tabloid newspapers handing over their own investigations to the police at the last minute."