The trial of an imam accused of conducting 580 sham marriages between Muslim men and European brides collapsed after the Home Office failed to hand over paperwork in time.
Mohammed Mattar, 62, was said to have presided over the bogus weddings at his Islamic bookshop in west London between 2008 and 2012 to help men win the right to stay in Britain.
He was due to stand trial at Isleworth Crown Court earlier this month but the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) dropped the charges after government investigators missed deadlines to hand over vital information.
The CPS said it was left with “no choice” but to offer no evidence following the Home Office mistake.
A CPS spokesman said: “In early 2014 we identified a large amount of potentially relevant material and we advised the Home Office investigation team to obtain and look into the material for the purpose of disclosure.
“In August it became apparent that this work had not been completed and therefore we would not be able to fully discharge disclosure obligations in the case before the trial.
“We therefore applied for an adjournment. This was refused by the court and we had no option, but to offer no evidence.”
Mr Mattar was arrested by officers from the UK Border Agency’s criminal and financial investigations team at the Dar Al Dawa Islamic centre and bookshop, in Westbourne Grove, London, in July 2012.
Mr Mattar was said to have acted as an imam at the Islamic centre between January 2008 and July 2012.
He was bailed until March 2013, when he was charged with conspiring to facilitate a breach of UK immigration law between January 2008 and July 2012 by conducting marriages between EU national females and non EU national males to obtain permanent leave to remain in the UK.
He was also charged with money laundering, relating to the alleged transfer of £1.9million to an Egyptian bank account in his name, but those charges were dropped in April.
On Wednesday, his wife denied he ever carried out any marriages, insisting he was simply a bookseller.
Speaking at their family home in Kilburn, north west London, his Malaysian wife Azizah Abdul Hamad, 57, told how police had searched their home two years ago.
She said: “We had a bookshop, that was it. He is a religious man, we are Muslim, but he never carried out any marriages.
“Police came to our house two years ago while he was in Egypt, I had just come back from Malaysia.
“They took some things away, I don’t know what it was, they said it was to do with sham marriages but Mohammed never talked about it.
“I am just a housewife, we have a son with Down’s Syndrome, I’m his full-time carer. We don’t speak about these things.”
Mrs Hamad said she was a “silent partner” in the Bayswater bookshop and occasionally worked there until they closed it “a couple of months ago because the lease was too high.”
When asked if her husband was ever an imam she said: “Not that I know of, I’m too busy looking after my child. He’s a trader and he’s always out working.”
The couple, who married in the UK in 1991, have six children, although only their disabled son lives at the Kilburn terrace. She said her son Ismail Mattar was a policeman.
Mr Mattar was said to visit Egypt two or three times year to visit relatives.
He owned the bookshop for more than 10 years.
Bilal Aziz, 47, who was a regular customer of Mr Mattar, said it closed down and Mr Mattar “disappeared” shortly after it was raided by police and shut down.
Mr Aziz, and English teacher, said: “I used to visit the shop regularly to buy incense.
“Mohammed was a perfectly nice man, very religious. I do not believe he was up to anything dodgy.
“I knew him quite well. I used to see him at the Regents Park Mosque where he worshipped. He owned a bookshop there before.”
News of the mistake by the Home Office comes just a day after a new report found Britain’s backlog of asylum claims had rocketed by 70 per cent in the last year, despite a number of reforms by by Theresa May, the Home Secretary.
The House of Commons’ influential Public Accounts Committee (PAC) revealed the Home Office is already missing newly-set targets for processing claims by would-be refugees.
The backlog of applications awaiting even an initial decision has jumped by 70 per cent to 16,273 in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period in 2013, the report said.
Details of the mountain of unprocessed claims emerged just 18 months after Mrs May abolished the UK Border Agency (UKBA) in a bid to shake up performance and tackle what she described as the agency’s “closed, secretive and defensive” culture.
In the new report MPs also expressed concern that the Home Office had wasted nearly £1 billion on botched computer systems.