A businessman who siphoned off cash from his company to fund his extravagant lifestyle was jailed today for three and a half years.

Mohammed Azwar Majeed, 33, of North Street, Brighton, cheated the Inland Revenue by failing to declare his withdrawals to avoid paying tax on the extra income, London's Southwark Crown Court heard.

The former owner of Crawley Town FC spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on luxury cars including Ferraris and Lamborghinis, expensive properties and payouts to "extravagant mistresses".

Judge Christopher Hardy said: "In just under five years you cheated the Revenue of somewhere in the region of £650,000 to £750,000 in regard to the conduct of your business as sole director of SA Retail, a wholesale alcohol business on the south coast, when you quite blatantly used very large sums of cash generated by your business as an almost bottomless piggy bank to fund your own extremely lavish lifestyle.

"This included a string of luxury cars, expensive properties and even, I am told, extravagant mistresses."

In January this year Majeed pleaded guilty to cheating the revenue, failure to keep sufficient accounting records and concealing criminal property.

Officers from the Met Police money laundering team searched a Harrod's safe deposit box in October 2006 belonging to Majeed in Knightsbridge, London.

They seized cash totalling £505,505.

The Judge sentenced Majeed to three years in prison for cheating the revenue, six months to run concurrently for failure to keep records and six months in jail for concealing the half a million pounds to run consecutively.

He said Majeed, who has 10 previous convictions, was not a man of good character.

"It has been put forward quite correctly that this was a relatively unsophisticated fraud and I have accepted that," the judge said.

"But this was not in any case a one-off fall from grace because I have been told of your previous convictions and it is quite clear that you have up until now developed all the qualities of a dishonest and manipulative rogue."

Around £42 million went through Majeed's business accounts, the court heard.

He transferred hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of that cash into his own personal "piggy bank" to go on his tax-free spending spree.

His purchases included numerous supercars, including a £600,000 Ferrari Enzo, a Lamborghini Murcielago worth more than £200,000, a Lamborghini Diablo, a Ferrari 355 Spider, a Porsche 996 Turbo, two Bentleys, four BMW M3s, three Range Rovers and a Mercedes.

Majeed, who owned a number of bars in the Brighton area, also bought five speed motorbikes and expensive stereo equipment.

He bought a penthouse apartment in Brighton for just under £800,000 in 2006 and a £1.6m property in Hove in 2007, the court heard.

The money owed to the HMRC - set out as £769,493.41 - will be recovered from Majeed's assets, the court heard.

A confiscation hearing was set for September 4.