A billionaire Arab sheikh said that British law worked on “money not justice”, and vowed to “stitch up” an employee who dared to challenge him, an employment tribunal was told yesterday.

Sheikh Maher al-Tajir, whose family owns 24,000 acres (9,700ha) of land in Perthshire and the Highland Spring bottled water company, is alleged to have told Chris Mulqueeney that he had enough money to buy anything he wanted in Britain, including the police and the justiciary.

When the former head gamekeeper said that Britain wasn’t like that, the sheikh is said to have replied: “You’re so patriotic. Hasn’t anyone told you that the law of this great land works on money, not justice, and I’ve got enough money to buy any of them? The police, the justiciary — all have their price in this country.”

The claims came as Mr Mulqueeney, 48, who worked as Mr al-Tajir’s head gamekeeper after moving his family from Kent to Scotland in 2001, told an employment tribunal in Edinburgh that the sheikh launched a two-hour verbal assault on him during a meeting in September 2004.

He said: “It was the most incredible onslaught, like you’d never seen. I’ve never witnessed anything like it.”

Describing the occasion as “more like a battleground than a meeting”, he said that Mr al-Tajir, who is a member of the Dubai Royal Family, had made explicit threats to dismiss him.

“He said to me, ‘You have taken me on and no one, but no one, takes me on’. He said, ‘I’ll find a reason to get rid of you’. And I said, ‘You can’t do that, Maher, if I haven’t done anything wrong’. He said, ‘I can and I will find a reason to get rid of you. I’ll instruct my legal team to stitch you up’.”

A note written by Mr Mulqueeney soon after the meeting recorded: “He [the sheikh] said he would find a reason for a verbal warning on Monday, another reason for a written warning on Tuesday, a final warning on Wednesday, a hearing on Thursday and dismissal on Friday, and his lawyers will make sure that it was all within the letter of the law.”

Mr Mulqueeney claims that he was dismissed unfairly from his position as head gamekeeper at Blackford Farms, near Dunblane, in Perthshire, which is owned by the press-shy al-Tajir family. He said that there was a witch-hunt to remove him from his job and that he was dismissed finally after a series of heated exchanges with Mr al-Tajir in 2004. He also asserted that he was verbally promised bonuses based on the number of grouse and pheasants reared and shot by visitors, but that he was never paid these.

Mr al-Tajir, 50, who is not attending the hearing, denies any such agreement.

Mr Mulqueeney told the tribunal yesterday that the sheikh’s attitude towards him changed after he went into hospital after an accident in July 2004. While recuperating at home, he received a telephone call from Mr al-Tajir. “I went to the phone thinking he’d called to ask me how I was. He said, ‘Pick me up at seven in the morning, I need a lift to the [river] Tay for fishing’.” After Mr Mulqueeney explained that he was too sick to work, the sheikh is said to have grown angry. “He said, ‘That’s no good to me if you can’t be there when I want you’, and put the phone down on me with the odd added swear word,” he said.

He said that at another meeting in January 2005 Mr al-Tajir again exploded, swearing at the gamekeeper’s wife, who also attended.

Mr Mulqueeney, who said that the accident led to his being treated for an abnormal heart rhythm, recalled: “It was horrendous. After the meeting my GP issued me with a letter to not attend any more meetings like it.”

The hearing continues.

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