A football club owner will go on trial today accused of conspiring to make misleading statements about an IT firm involved in a major NHS project.

Barnsley Football Club owner and former iSoft Group chairman Patrick Cryne, 58, and three other former directors of the IT firm deny conspiracy to make misleading statements to the stock market about the company.

The Financial Services Authority alleges the men misled the stock market and external auditors about the firm’s financial position.

Cryne, of Glossop, Derbyshire, is accused of conspiring with the three others to say a contract with the Irish Hospital Information Systems had been signed and funded before 30 April 2005.

Cryne, former chief executive Timothy Whiston, 42, of Lymm, Cheshire, and former directors Stephen Graham, 46, from Knutsford, Cheshire, and John Whelan, 43, of Cheadle Hulme, Stockport, will appear at Southwark Crown Court.

iSoft, which was involved in the NHS software programme known as the National Programme for IT, has since been sold to Australian software firm IBA Health, which renamed itself iSoft after the takeover in October 2007.

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