A BRADFORD businessman likened himself to Walt Disney in the way he set up a secret deal with a city centre law firm, a court heard.

Mohammed Riaz, who ran a company called Legal Support Services, said he had a private arrangement with Chambers Solicitors to provide interpreters for immigration cases.

He said only himself, his brother Mohammed Ayub, the boss of Chambers, and his daughter, an accounts clerk at Chambers, knew of the deal.

Prosecutors allege LSS was a “sham” company used to defraud the Legal Aid Agency out of nearly £600,000 by dishonestly inflating interpreters’ fees. Riaz, 48, of Southfield Square, Manningham, told a Sheffield Crown Court jury his deal with Chambers followed the “doctrine of undisclosed principals” in law.

“I had seen this on a Sky documentary many years ago,” he said.

The court heard Walt Disney apparently used agents acting as his ‘undisclosed principal’ to buy land in Florida for Disney World without declaring his identity, which would have upped the price of the land. Riaz said he adopted this strategy with LSS booking interpreters who believed they were working for Chambers to protect his business against rivals setting up a competing interpreters’ agency.

“Walt Disney was the principal as I was the principal,” he told the court.

“Chambers were working on my behalf. They were working as agents for me.”

He told prosecutor Simon Kealey under cross-examination that Disney’s purchase of valuable land was equivalent to his booking of interpreters. Riaz said interpretation work “exploded” from four or five cases a week to 30 when Chambers won a contract from the LAA for immigration and asylum work in 2010.

He said other agencies acted in the same way and it was not dishonest.

“I was allowed to do it and it was between me and my brother.”

Asked by Mr Kealey why the agreement was kept secret from case workers and interpreters, he replied: “They didn’t need to know. There’s nothing illegal about it. I was just running my business in the way anyone would run their business.”

He said calls on his mobile, which the prosecution say reveal LSS was a bogus firm, were made to family members who worked for Chambers in furtherance of interpretation work and “not discussing whether the dinner was ready”.

Riaz, Ayub, 55, of Aireville Drive, Shipley, and Chambers immigration supervisor Neil Frew, 48, of Hoyle Court Drive, Baildon, deny a joint charge of conspiracy to defraud.

The trial continues.

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