The Virgin boss Richard Branson has denied allegations of "injecting dirt" at every opportunity in his libel action against the chairman of an American lottery company.

Mr Branson, and Guy Snowden, the Chairman of GTech, which owns 22% of Camelot, are suing each other over Mr Branson's allegations that he was offered a bribe to drop his bid to run the UK's national lottery.

Richard Ferguson QC

In ill-tempered exchanges with Mr Snowden's barrister, Richard Ferguson QC, the Virgin boss insisted he was only trying to get at the truth by referring to US investigations into GTech.

Mr Branson also denied that he jumped to a wrong conclusion over the alleged attempted bribe from Guy Snowden, a director of Camelot, in the run-up to the UK lottery franchise contest.

Words spoken during lunch

The alleged bribe offer came during a lunch at Mr Branson's home in Holland Park in September 1993. He told the High Court that the words he claims were spoken by Guy Snowden constituted an attempt to bribe, not a "rather crude business proposition."

The 47-year-old entrepreneur told Mr Justice Morland and the jury he thought that tens of millions of pounds was on offer if he withdrew his rival bid.

He told the court he believed that Mr Snowden did not mention a figure to him because he got a "very, very clear rebuff."

Exchanges were frequently acrimonious

Mr Branson told the court he did not ask Mr Snowden where the money was coming from, because: "If you start getting into details with a man like that, how much money and so on, I think it is extremely dangerous.

"I was shocked, surprised, astonished about the proposition itself. I had no wish to hear any more details."

Claim, counter-claim

Mr Branson is suing Mr Snowden, GTech, and its PR director, Robert Rendine, for claiming he made the bribery allegation when he knew there was insufficient evidence to support it.

For his part Mr Snowden is suing Mr Branson for making the allegation on a BBC Panorama programme in December 1995.

Mr Snowden's barrister, Richard Ferguson, offered the court a different version of the lunch, which started with the GTech director being complimentary towards Mr Branson before questioning his ability to achieve the targets set out in his (Mr Branson's) lottery bid.

However Mr Branson completely denied Mr Ferguson's version of events.

The hearing has been adjourned until Tuesday

Mr Branson went onto insist that his case was backed by a phone call from Sir Tim Bell, on behalf of GTech, four days after the meeting.

He told the court that Sir Tim used words to the effect that Mr Snowden "might have said something that he might regret", which showed the extreme importance of events at the lunch. He said that he could not remember Sir Tim ever ringing him before about anything.

Heated exchanges

But with the temperature of the court exchanges rising Mr Ferguson said "as clearly as I can" that Sir Tim said no such thing to Mr Branson.

Mr Branson replied: "At least you are now coming out and accusing me of lying about something. But I was very clear about what Sir Tim said to me and Will Whitehorn (Mr Branson's PR) was very clear as well. He was there hearing the conversation with me."

Asked why he did not then go public, in the light of his "full house" of "overwhelming" evidence, Mr Branson said he was advised to concentrate on winning the bid and that to speak about the bribe attempt would only "muddy the water."

The hearing was adjourned until Tuesday.
 

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