Exposé puts rugby club con man behind bars for seven years

His schemes included buying London Welsh, which was in administration, for a

nominal sum of £6 and then duping the club’s backers to give him £350,000 as

a short-term loan to pay off its debts.

Hollinshead promised to invest £1.4 million in the club. In reality he had

little or no money of his own and instead took £156,000 out of the club to

buy a Porsche and a Range Rover. He also owed money to Kenny Logan, the

former Scottish rugby international, and to Tim Cahill, the former Everton

and Australia footballer.

^{Neil Hollinshead with Kenny Logan}

When Hollinshead was investigated by The Telegraph in 2009, he threatened to

sue the newspaper for libel and falsely accused a reporter of harassing his

daughter and even his grandmother. This newspaper had disclosed details of

his fraud to buy London Welsh, having also failed in an attempt to buy

London Scottish, a rival club.

Det Sgt Nick Kemsley, of the City of London police, the lead force for major

frauds, said: “Hollinshead was a master conman who used a web of lies and

deception. Money that had been put aside to pay the players and cover club

debts was used to keep his Ponzi scheme afloat and to buy expensive cars.”

According to rugby sources, Hollinshead turned up on the rugby circuit in

2006. He was a hopeless amateur player dubbed “bellies” by his teammates at

London Scottish. His eagerness to please made him popular and within two

years, Hollinshead, a business school graduate from Aylesbury, Bucks, was

promising to sponsor the club for £300,000 over three years through his oil

company Saudex Global.

The club, a once great team which was struggling in the professional era,

grabbed the offer. The chairman of Saudex, according to the listings at

Companies House, was Prince Khalid Alwaleed Bin Talal Al Saud, the

great-nephew of Saudia Arabia’s King Abdullah.

For a season London Scottish played with Saudex Global emblazoned on their

shirts even though Saudex Global was itself a fraud. In an email to The

Sunday Telegraph, in 2009, a spokesman for Prince Khalid said: “HRH Prince

Alwaleed has never heard of Saudex Global nor does he know a Neil

Hollinshead.”

Officials at London Scottish became suspicious about Hollinshead’s claims of

vast wealth. Logan, a director at London Scottish, began legal action for

£40,000 for sports marketing work he said Hollinshead owed him.

Driven out of London Scottish, Hollinshead turned to the club’s rival London

Welsh. He bought the club through Red Dragon Rugby, a consortium he said had

£1.4 million in the bank. But The Sunday Telegraph disclosed in 2010 that

Hollinshead had faked an email purportedly from HSBC bank showing Red Dragon

had £1.3 million in the bank. The email had been sent by an employee called

David Marson who did not exist.

London Welsh’s former owners took legal action in the High Court against

Hollinshead, regaining control in the process. They called in the police and

in 2011 Hollinshead was first arrested.

At this point, Hollinshead left the UK while on bail, moving to Dubai where he

set up his own rugby club called Dubai Wasps. In a further attempt to escape

his past, he began wearing a wig and changed his name to Neil Peters.

Eventually, after a three-year investigation by City of London detectives,

Hollinshead faced trial on a string of charges, all of which he denied. Last

week, after a five-week trial at Southwark Crown Court, Hollinshead was

found guilty on three counts of fraud. Jailing Hollinshead, Judge Higgins

described his behaviour as “despicable”.

For a brief period Hollinshead had attempted to rule the rugby world.

According to one fan, Hollinshead would turn up at matches with his then

wife Yasmin and their pet bulldog alongside them. They would stroll the

perimeter, Hollinshead waving to the crowd as “if he was minor royalty”. His

fantasy is now shredded while the clubs that he tried to rip off — London

Scottish and London Welsh — are both now thriving.

Exposé puts rugby club con man behind bars for seven years