Bond seeks Court help in obtaining unaired Panorama footage

One of those stung in the BBC Panorama exposé is going to court in his demand to see footage that was not aired during the program.

Kevin Bond, the English Bournemouth manager who assisted at Portsmouth, was featured in the "bungs" programme. Several of those featured, including Bond, Portsmouth's manager Harry Redknapp and Bolton manager Sam Allardyce, threatened legal action.

If Bond is successful in forcing BBC to hand over the footage, it will likely mean Redknapp, Allardyce and others featured in the programme will follow suit.

Redknapp has been the only one to go the legal route thus far, filing a libel claim against the BBC. Prior to the airing, his solicitor filed a writ alleging that the pre-publicity, which they claimed originated from the BBC, was defamatory.

Solicitors acting for Bond, who was Redknapp's assistant at Portsmouth and subsequently fired by Newcastle as the first-team coach, will appear before Justice Eady next week to request "pre-action disclosure" of the tapes.

Their interest will be in Bond's interaction with undercover reporter Knut auf dem Berge. In the programme, auf dem Berge is seen speaking to Bond over the phone.

During the conversation, Bond was taped saying that "I totally understand where you're coming from. I understand what you're looking for, and certainly myself and Harry would be open to listening to, you know, in order to come to some arrangement, if you like, where whatever we need we'll make sure that we call you, and what you really want is that we call you and only you."

Bond has since denied taking a bung or being involved in any way with illegal payments. One of his solicitors, David Price, claimed the conversation was taken out of context and was misleading.

Still, English Newcastle gave him the boot.

The BBC had already agreed to hand over unaired material to the FA, which is conducting an investigation.

Source: euFootball.BIZ © Copyright 2006 - All rights reserved.