Alam denies she lied over sexual harassment claims

Faria Alam, the former Football Association secretary who was at the centre of a sex scandal, has been accused of lying under oath and claiming sexual harassment in order to secure a payoff from her former employers.

Ms Alam, 39, told an employment tribunal last week that she not only had affairs with the England coach, Sven Goran Eriksson, and the FA's chief executive, Mark Palios, but claimed sexual harassment against David Davies, its executive director.

Yesterday she was ordered to appear again before the tribunal after apparent inconsistencies emerged between her oral evidence and the contents of an interview which she gave to a Sunday newspaper last October.

In an article in TheMail on Sunday based on an eight-hour interview, Ms Alam is quoted as saying that Mr Davies had never "tried it on".

She added in the previously unpublished piece that her boss, aged 57, was a "jovial" employer. Lawyers for the FA, which stands accused of sexual harassment, constructive dismissal, breach of contract and unequal pay, seized on the latest disclosures.

"You simply told a lie, knowing you were telling a lie and you were expecting that it would never come out [the interview] and you would get away with it" said Jeffrey Bacon, for the Football Association. Mr Bacon added that if the content of the interview was true, then "everything you said under oath was simply not true".

Clearly shaken, Ms Alam repeatedly insisted she had not spoken of the alleged harassment last year because she did not want to bring up Mr Davies and because she felt sorry for his wife.

"I didn't want to bring anyone else into it and it is true he is a good boss," Ms Alam said. Mr Bacon told her that if she had not been deceitful to the tribunal, then she must have been deceitful to The Mail on Sunday - with whom she had signed a contract pledging to tell the truth.

She said: "I'm not being deceitful. I stand by what I said last year and I stand by what I said this year."

Outside the court yesterday, her solicitor Nigel Forsyth said: "We are happy with the way things went. We feel we have had a fair hearing and we will have to wait to hear what the tribunal says."

Ms Alam rolled her eyes when a reporter suggested she had been depicted as a "golddigger" and said only: "I'm going on holiday."

The tribunal earlier heard from the association's head of legal and business affairs Alistair MacLean, who said that Ms Alam had been "clear" that she had not had an affair with Mr Eriksson and had told him so on 10 occasions.

Mr MacLean, one of three senior executives who questioned her about events on 19 July last year, added: "I told her that this would be a very expensive matter for all of us if she was lying." The executive said that as letters were drafted to newspapers denying stories of the affair, the secretary had appeared composed and was worried only about the effect of the allegations on her conservative Muslim parents.

Mr MacLean also revealed yesterday that Ms Alam, who claims she did not resign in order to sell her story, signed media deals worth £300,000 minutes before she sent her resignation letter on 5 August. He said that documents detailing two £150,000 agreements with the News of the World and The Mail on Sunday were timed at 6.47pm.

The lawyer told the tribunal that the secretary had then faxed her resignation letter from the office of Max Clifford, the public relations consultant, at 6.53pm.

The hearing will resume on 26 July for submissions and the three-strong panel is expected to deliver a judgment in August.