CHEATING on your spouse is about to get easier. Two German “alibi agencies” which provide cover stories for the unfaithful will open in Britain in the next six months.

Alibi services are already on offer across Germany to aid the unfaithful, the lecherous, the sly and the devious in the pursuit of whatever illicit pleasure they seek.

Perfect Alibi and Alibi Agent, both coming to Britain, are among ten companies that now construct elaborate excuses for their clientele.

Whoppers are what are on offer from these factories of illusion: tall stories convincingly told by parties unknown to those to whom the yarns are spun. For people wanting to dodge a meeting, a relative, a lover, a creditor or a spouse, the alibis can be simple or elaborate, ranging in price from £15 to £800 a day.

Jens Schlingensief, who runs Perfect Alibi, said: “I didn’t start this as a business, I just wanted to help a friend out who was in a real mess since he started seeing another woman. The idea just grew out of that.

“I helped my friend to work out a professional set of excuses and it worked, and he was so pleased with what I did he told a few others, and it just spread. I then realised I could help to provide a service as there was obviously a demand to help people by providing them with alibis.”

The alibi agencies were condemned as “immoral” by the Catholic Church in Germany, but Herr Schlingensief is unrepentant, saying: “I know the Church has condemned what we do but at the end of the day most affairs don’t last long anyway.

“What we do means the partner is less likely to find out and is spared the hurt — and often relationships are much better after an affair.” He said that he was on target to have offices in eight European countries, including Britain, by the end of the year. “We have to expand because competition in Germany is pretty tough now,” he said.

Almost as many women as men use the firm and about a third of the customers are manual workers. Perfect Alibi claims that a “surprising number” of the rest are politicians and celebrities, including one who is a German household name.

But he said: “There are rules, and the number one is the right of client confidentiality — whoever they are.”

The firm will also not offer alibis for dodging the taxman, official business creditors or the police, but will help out in other cases like that of the golf-mad Hamburg businessman who takes a weekend a month off to play without his wife finding out and who even managed to spend three days in America while his wife thought he was at a congress in Cologne.

Another was for a man who wanted to arrange a surprise wedding and needed a lot of time away from his partner to organise it.

Herr Schlingensief said that his plans for a London office were well advanced and that he believes that the market is perfect. He said: “As a big business capital with all those people packed into one city there is a lot of potential. All those risk-taking businessman that have professional advisers to make sure their latest ventures work are certain to be happy that they can have similar advice taking risks in their private lives.”

Tanja Haas, client manager at Perfect Alibi, says that business is booming. “We get 200 to 300 new clients each month. And then we have 100 to 130 clients who use us regularly,” she said. “When women employ us, most of the time it is women who are trying to get the alibi for their partner who is married. So it is the mistress who is getting the alibi.”

Alibi Agent’s most popular service is the written invitation that allows a partner to escape to a fake meeting or seminar.

A false invitation costs £20 from Perfect Alibi. All prices include the cost of 24-hour “support services” — fielding calls from partners keen to check that an appointment is genuine.

Perfect Alibi also supplies background noises designed to convince the listener that their loved one really is calling from a conference or a business seminar. These telephone calls cost £13.

Alibi Agent goes one step further with the provision of the most expensive alibi: the permanent one. This is aimed at people who want to fabricate an intricate false identity. Clients become employees of an imaginary company, receiving a package complete with business cards. When the unwanted person tries to reach them, a “secretary” tells them that the client is unreachable.

“With the permanent alibi you can tell people that you are the boss of a company or anything,” Jochen Schultz, technical leader at Alibi Agent, said.

British companies have yet to match their enterprising German counterparts. Rather than concocting false alibis, British firms concentrate on “honey traps” and what is dubbed in the detective trade as “marital surveillance”.

Their services are in demand — one in four British marriages ends in divorce after one partner has committed adultery. A study conducted by Policy Exchange, a think-tank, this year suggested that Britain has one of the highest rates of infidelity in the Western world: more than four in ten people admitted to having had more than one relationship at a time.

Detective agencies are dismissive of companies that employ women and men to trap cheating lovers.

Tony Price, operations director at Mercury Professional Services, said: “That is something we would definitely steer clear of.”

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