A family affair

On 13 September, Simon Brophy got sent to jail for four and a half years. And it looks as though it all started when he played a duff hand in an adjudication in 2001.

I suppose Brophy thought he was super clever. Truth is, he only ran the same old scam that the building industry has seen lots of times before. It’s called theft. Let me tell you what he did. He made sure certain contracts went into certain hands, then he supervised the account for those certain contracts so that the firm he worked for paid over the odds. Then he nipped round to the payee’s back door and collected his cut. Ordinary? Yes. Prison? Oh yes. He is a thief. The firm he placed orders with was his own outfit, or rather it was owned by his mum, bless her.

Now let’s go back some years. Pro-Design Ltd began an adjudication early in 2001 against the Millennium Dome folk: the New Millennium Experience Company. Pro-Design was the appointed lighting company for the £1.9m contract. A dispute arose over the account and an adjudicator was called up by Pro-Design. The adjudicator concluded the proceedings without fault. The issues put to him were decided in favour of the electrical contractor. An award was made. Meanwhile, someone began to get wind that the chief of the Dome’s lighting management team had a “collateral interest” in the contractor, Pro-Design. The lawyers for the Dome began to ask if the Dome’s electrical manager was placing orders with his own or his mum’s company … and sending Dome money in interim accounts to his own company.

Pro-Design then made a mistake. It sought to enforce the adjudicator’s award for the cash in its favour. It began an action in the Technology and Construction Court in Liverpool and the case came before Judge Mackay. He said that the award was faultless. The Dome’s lawyers told the judge that they had wind that Pro-Design was a fraudulent vehicle owned, operated, managed, controlled and supervised by a senior employee of the Dome … one Simon Brophy. More than that, the judge was told that Brophy had, in breach of his employment contract, conspired with others to create a company to carry out the lighting work. Ouch!

Judge Mackay turned to counsel for Pro-Design and asked whether he was in a position to make comment on and agree that Brophy was the creator of Pro-Design, that Brophy was boss of Dome lighting and that he had used his mother to own the shares. But counsel said he had no instructions on all this. Well, said Mackay this court lives in the real world, quite apart from the right to enforce the award. He refused to enforce. Wait until all these allegations are tried out.

Brophy had taken time off to fly his helicopter, set up bank accounts in Switzerland, visit his second home in Florida Keys and sail his yacht

And four years down the line they were, and this time in the Crown Court at Southwark. The Dome Company had appointed Brophy in 1998 as head of lighting. Within a few months he had invited four companies to bid for the lighting maintenance contract. The contract was awarded to – guess who – Pro-Design. I suspect that during the adjudication the lawyers decided to report their suspicions to the corruption team at the Met. Nowadays such reports are a must under the Proceeds of Crime Act. The £1.9m contract had swollen to £3.9m. Meanwhile, Brophy had taken time off to fly his helicopter, set up bank accounts in Switzerland and the USA, visit his second home in the Florida Keys and sail his yacht in Malta.

He pleaded guilty at the trial. His co-conspirator David Gordon, another director of Pro-Design, also pleaded guilty. He was the one who lodged invoices for £3.9m. He got prison as well. It was even found that Pro-Design’s bid for the Dome contract included false claims it had been trading for several years and employing scores of staff. The bid included fake references from Alton Towers, MTV and London Theatres.

Look, it is the work of a thief to place a contract as an employee with a supplier and collect a rake off from it. Don’t tell me it doesn’t go on! The same goes for agreeing a final account and taking a bung in return. This is not a fiddle or a bit of ducking and diving, it is fraud. It is jail. Brophy is 39 years old. He will hate prison. When he comes out, his career, his future, his prospects will be blighted. As for his old mum, I bet she’s devastated.