The ex-chief executive of Southern Water has been charged with three others over an alleged plan to manipulate water quality tests to avoid paying financial penalties of about £45m, it can now be reported.
Matthew Wright is accused of conspiring to defraud the Environment Agency (EA) and water regulator Ofwat between 2012 and 2017, along with Philip Barker, Clive Massey and Mark Gregory, who also worked at the firm.
Wright’s solicitor says he “denies all wrongdoing and has co-operated fully” with the EA’s investigation.
Southern Water said the charges related to “a historic set of failures” uncovered in an internal investigation. It said it was a “completely different” company to a decade ago.
The EA asked a judge to issue a summons against the four, charging them with the offence, last year, but Wright launched a legal challenge, dismissed by two senior judges on Wednesday.
Massey, Gregory and Barker did not appear at the hearing in London and were not represented.
According to court documents, the allegations include arranging for wastewater to be removed from facilities by tankers in order to create “no flow” results.
This had been “with a view to covering up pollution and deceiving those whose function is to protect the public from such harm”, prosecutors allege.
In his legal challenge, Wright’s lawyers argued at the High Court in June that the EA did not have the power to issue the summons and it should be thrown out.
But the judges dismissed his claim and ruled restrictions previously preventing reporting of the legal challenge should be lifted.
Separate court listings showed the case against 60-year-old Wright, of Haslemere, Surrey; Barker, 57, of West Chiltington, West Sussex; Massey, 64, of Brandhill, Shropshire; and Gregory, 63, of Southampton, were scheduled to be heard at Medway Magistrates’ Court on 14 July.
The four are accused of conspiring between 2012 and 2017 to defraud those conducting the environmental and financial regulation duties of Southern Water, including the EA and Ofwat, by “the implementation of artificial no-flow events at wastewater treatment works”.