Lottery winner was left penniless after football club fraud, court told

Published on Monday 24 August 2009 22:16

A LOTTERY winner was left jobless and penniless after he lost about £4 million through investing in Livingston Football Club, a fraud trial heard yesterday.

Football-lover John McGuinness, 45, had lived his dream of being heavily involved in a club, and the West Lothian team initially enjoyed remarkable success, rising through the divisions and playing the likes of Manchester United in glamorous friendlies. But ultimately things went sour, a court heard.

Mr McGuinness said he had agreed to be liable for a bank loan, but only after seeing the signature of his friend, the multi-millionaire Willie Haughey, on the paperwork.

He told a jury at the High Court in Edinburgh he would never have agreed had he suspected that the signature was a forgery. "I just wanted to help the club … I thought, if things go wrong, it is not just me," he said.

Livingston's former chairman, Dominic Keane, 54, denies duping Mr McGuinness, who was a director at the club, as part of a scheme to obtain money from the Royal Bank of Scotland. It is alleged that he fraudulently obtained facilities worth 2.3 million and that, as a result, Mr McGuinness and Mr Haughey were exposed to court action to recover the debt.

Mr McGuinness scooped 10 million on the lottery in 1996 while working as a nurse. He gave up his job and lived off the interest from his win. He had an interest in football, and followed Celtic, where both Keane and Mr Haughey had been directors.

He looked at buying a club, and considered Motherwell and Hamilton before finally deciding on Livingston in 1998.

By that stage, he had met the other two men and had agreed to invest 600,000 in a pub chain with which they were associated. The Livingston purchase was for 1, but involved taking on the club's debts.

Mr McGuinness said he was to be the investor, Keane would run the club day to day, and Mr Haughey would act in a supervisory capacity.

Their shared ambition was to turn Livingston into a Scottish Premier League club, for which a 10,000 capacity stadium was required. A new stand was constructed and, within only a few years, they had reached SPL status, and enjoyed playing friendlies against Manchester United, Newcastle and other English and foreign clubs.

In 2001, he signed documents relating to a loan that had been taken out earlier to fund the building of a new stand. He had put up bonds as security to obtain the loan, and had agreed to become liable with Keane and Mr Haughey for repaying it.

Mr McGuinness told the advocate-depute he signed the papers at Keane's request after seeing they had already been signed by Keane and Mr Haughey.

"Mr Keane said it was for the club, and I was just trying to help the club," said Mr McGuinness.

Asked whom he trusted in relation to his business activities at Livingston, Mr McGuinness said: "Mr Keane and Mr Haughey."

Handwriting experts have cast doubt on the "W Haughey" signatures, and Mr McGuinness said he had not known they might have been forgeries.

He explained that things went wrong at Livingston, and he lost the bonds he had used as security for the loan. He had been sued by RBS.

Mr McGuinness was asked how much he had lost in relation to the club. He said: "3m or 4m".

He added that he was unemployed. When asked if he had anything left from his winnings, he said no.

The trial continues.

FROM ONE-BEDROOM HOME TO 10M

JOHN McGuinness won more than 10 million on the National Lottery in January 1996 – becoming Scotland's biggest lottery winner.

Until then the former theatre nurse at Law Hospital in Carluke, near Glasgow, had been earning 700 a month.

Mr McGuinness lived with his disabled parents in their one-bedroom house in Shotts. He was struggling to keep up mortgage payments on his former home where his wife lived with their daughter.

He remarried in 2003, spending 200,000 on the wedding and 40,000 on drinks.