MILLIONAIRE Owen Oyston told police he had been subjected to a "very nasty and vicious" campaign for 10 to 12 years.

In court this week, he named Lord Blaker - formerly Blackpool South MP Sir Peter Blaker - and ex-sports minister Robert Atkins, MP for South Ribble, as having mounted the conspiracy against him.

The colourful chairman of Blackpool Football Club, a life-long Labour supporter, told Liverpool Crown Court that he had 48 hours of tape recordings of conversations between Lord Blaker, Mr Atkins, Blackpool businessman William Harrison, a man named Michael Murrin "and a whole range of other senior people in the Conservative party".

Oyston, 62, said the tapes showed Blaker, Harrison and Atkins "were running a conspiracy against me and members of the North West Labour Party."

Earlier, Det Con Martyn Hughes had told the court, where Oyston denies raping two teenagers, that at the start of an interview in February last year the accused had told him he believed his arrest was linked to the alleged conspiracy.

The officer said Oyston had told him on his arrest at his home, Claughton Hall, near Lancaster, that it had come only three weeks before a civil case against the two politicians had been due to come before the High Court.

The civil action did not come to court because of "a lawyer's mistake," but was now being pursued through the European Court of Human Rights.

Oyston told the jury that at one time he was being investigated by the Fraud Squad, the Inland Revenue, the Drugs Squad, the City's regulatory takeover body IMRO, international private investigators, the Insight team from the Sunday Times, and other newspapers.

"They tried to bring the world down upon me and others associated with me," he said.

Replying to his defence counsel, Anthony Scrivener QC, he said he had been cleared of wrong-doing by all those bodies.

Yesterday (May 8) - the ninth day of the trial - Oyston repeated claims that the two Tory politicians had co-ordinated attacks on his business activities.

Oyston also spoke of staying frequently at the Hilton Hotel with the first girl in the case.

The girl, a model and former beauty queen, has told the trial Oyston raped her on the second occasion she met him.

Oyston told the court that he had spent thousands in cash and clothes on the girl over a period of years, adding: "I am embarrassed about the sums involved. I gave her money for a car, money for clothes."

Oyston denies raping the woman at his home in 1989, when she was 18.

He also denies raping and indecently assaulting the second young woman when she was 16.

The tycoon and his wife Vicki divorced in 1982 and remarried six years later.

He said that in the intervening period, when he was chief executive of the Miss World group, he had "a lot of girlfriends".

He added: "I have always had a great respect for women.

"I have never had this kind of problem. My character is totally without blemish. That is why I am so deeply distressed and I am also angry - that is the only thing that has kept me going."

Proceeding

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