A man often described in the past as Bermuda's "friend in Britain" may face prosecution after losing a copyright battle in a London High Court Tuesday.

Former Conservative MP Rupert Allason - who owned a Tucker's Town home for more than 15 years while married to Bermudian Nicole Van Moppes - was branded "profoundly and cynically dishonest" by the court according to a Reuters report.

In handing down his judgement against Allason, Mr. Justice Hugh Laddie told the former MP he intended to forward court files and pages from Allason's website (www.nigelwest.com) to Britain's Director of Public Prosecutions.

The legal battle centred around the copyright of the book `The Enigma Spy' penned by former spy John Cairncross.

Cairncross, who was also known as the "Fifth Man" in the Cambridge spy ring, died in 1995 at age 82.

He had worked at the government's secret communications monitoring agency, GCHQ, during World War II, and was recruited by the Soviets when he left Trinity College, Cambridge.

Allason claimed he had served as ghost writer on the book and was seeking copyright and damages from its publisher Random House Group.

In addition to serving as a politician, Allason, 48, is a well known author of spy novels published under the name "Nigel West" and considered as a leading expert on intelligence issues.

The publisher fought the copyright claim and the High Court determined Allason's testimony was unreliable.

According to Reuters, Mr. Justice Laddie said Allason "ranks as one of the most dishonest witnesses I have ever seen" and ordered that he pay Random House court costs of roughly $350,000.

The judge said part of Allason's case was that he was not the editorial director of publishers St. Ermin's Press and he claimed that his website under the name NigelWest.com would verify that he was only an editorial consultant.

But when the judge accessed the site on his laptop the site said Allason was an `editorial director'. Accessing the site the next day, the judge found Allason's title changed to `editorial consultant'.

"In my view this is even more serious than the extensive untrue evidence given by you at trial. I therefore intend to refer these papers to the Director of Public Prosecutions," Reuters quoted Mr. Justice Laddie.

Allason served as Conservative MP for Torbay from 1987 to 1997 and often voiced the Island's concerns in Parliament and the halls of power in London.

He founded the Anglo-Bermuda Parliamentary Group and was widely outspoken on Island issues both within Bermuda and Britain.

But Allason was divorced from his Bermudian wife in 1997, the Parliamentary Group fell into disuse after he lost his seat and he has not had a home on the Island for some time.