Racing: New threat to security chief

Exclusive: Panorama producer claims to have footage which further damages Jockey Club

The Jockey Club are bracing themselves for further revelations from their former head of security, Roger Buffham, who is one of the chief witnesses for the prosecution of racing's integrity in the BBC Panorama programme tonight.

Buffham turned over as many as 80 confidential documents to the programme-makers. But the producers based their controversial investigation into corruption on only about a quarter of the documents available.

"This is just the tip of the iceberg," said Stephen Scott, producer of The Corruption of Racing, which will be screened at 10.15pm on BBC 1. "Last week I had several phone calls from people making serious allegations, two against members of the Jockey Club and one against a large firm of bookmakers. This is not just historical, this is an ongoing problem."

Scott has been told by the BBC to continue his research on corruption in racing with a view to compiling a follow-up programme.

Not revealed in the programme was an exchange between Jeremy Phipps, the new head of security at the Jockey Club, and Buffham about the running of Istabraq in the 2002 Champion Hurdle, a meeting secretly filmed by Panorama. The fitness of Istabraq was the subject of massive speculation in the weeks before the Cheltenham Festival and, though the horse's trainer, Aidan O'Brien, was very cautious about the prospects of the defending champion, the decision to run was universally welcomed by punters and bookmakers. Istabraq, aiming for a record fourth successive Champion Hurdle title, attracted significant investment from his vast army of followers, but was pulled up after two hurdles.

"Look at Istabraq now recently," says Buffham. Phipps: "Appalling." Buffham: "Didn't you smell a rat over that?" Phipps: "Course I f****** did." The race was never investigated by the Jockey Club, despite the almost farcical circumstances of Istabraq's farewell.

In a separate part of the conversation, Phipps also admits that a decision by the Jockey Club not to pay £3,000 for the Manchester Police to travel to Hong Kong, and which was used by the programme as significant proof of the Jockey Club's reluctance to pursue investigations, was a mistake.

If the documents held by the BBC's lawyers under an agreement with the Jockey Club are also released by the courts, they will shed further light on alleged associations between prominent jockeys and known criminal elements in Hong Kong. Champion jockey Kieren Fallon has denied the allegations and brought a libel action against a national newspaper.

In the programme, Phipps is heard describing members of the Jockey Club as "f****** ignorant" and the system of licensing jockeys and trainers as "crap". He also admits that the Jockey Club lack the "backbone" to protect the integrity of the sport.

Though Phipps's comments have to be placed in context of a meeting which was designed to lure Buffham into revealing the extent of his involvement in the Panorama programme, Phipps is bound to be the first casualty of the BBC's revelations. Whether Christopher Foster, the chief executive of the Jockey Club, who sanctioned Phipps's meeting with Buffham, also resigns is a matter of debate.

Yesterday, the Jockey Club began to man the defensive barricades, highlighting the unreliability of Panorama's two main witnesses, Buffham and Dermot Browne, the former jockey. "We haven't seen the programme, which puts us at a disadvantage," said John Maxse, public relations director of the Jockey Club. "But if reports are right, it is astonishing that the BBC omit to inform the viewers of vital and relevant facts about their two principal witnesses.

"He [Buffham] left the Jockey Club after an investigation into allegations of gross misconduct... Browne [was] banned from racing by the Jockey Club 10 years ago. Omissions of that magnitude are to me an indication of the bias of the programme."