Tycoon vows to restore his good name

Multi-millionaire Dabs.com founder David Atherton said he had turned his back on his cocaine-fuelled lifestyle and pledged never to touch drugs again.

He spoke out for the first time since being found not guilty at Leeds Crown Court on Friday of five charges, including one of attempted rape.

The incident was alleged to have taken place in the kitchen of his luxury mansion in Victoria Road, Heaton.

Lurid details of the Mr Atherton’s hedonistic lifestyle were revealed during the two-week trial, including his cocaine addiction, carefree spending, all-night parties and group sex.

Now the 51-year says he intends to spend the rest of his life managing the investment of his vast wealth and relaxing quietly with his family on his luxury yacht and at his home in Lanzarote.

He said of cocaine: “I’m never going to do it again. It is in the nature of addiction that you think you can handle it.

“That’s the central part of what I learned going to The Priory clinic and, like an alcoholic, I have to totally abstain.

“It was a wake-up call. One of my friends said to me that if you keep on like this you’ll end up either dead or in prison.

“I’m going to leave it all behind. They’re all together, the crazy parties — it’s all to do with coke.”

Mr Atherton is intent on restoring his good name and once more becoming a pillar of the business community.

He said: “The problem is washing your dirty laundry in public. Everything else that came out of the trial; the sexual promiscuity, the use of coke — I wasn’t on trial for any of that, but that’s the mud that sticks.”

Mr Atherton was philosophical about the situation, and quoted a passage from the Jane Austen novel, Pride and Prejudice.

He said: “What is life but to make sport of our neighbours and in turn for them to make fun of us?

“That’s what the reportage of the trial was like.”

Mr Atherton said one of the main reasons he allowed cocaine to take over his life was the boredom he experienced for two years after he sold Dabs.com.

During that time he was prohibited from taking part in any competitive business as a condition of the sale.

Now he says he intends to fill his time by ploughing his money into the computer industry that he loves and knows so well. He has already invested in a networking company, DBAM.

He said: “There’s enough activity managing my money to keep me occupied for two thirds of the working week.

“The rest of the time I’ll spend with my family at my house in Lanzarote and going out on my boat.”

As well as his boat, Mr Atherton now intends to make use of the 40-foot, £170,000 recreational vehicle he has bought from America.

The only problem is that there are no camp sites or holiday parks in the UK big enough for him to use it.

He said: “I should have just bought a camper van.”

Mr Atherton bought the vehicle after almost all his material wealth — which he had used as part of an historic £10 million bail agreement — was returned to him.

He had to raise the money in 24 hours when he was first arrested and believes it is the biggest bail sum ever paid in this country.

He paid a further £10 million to have his electronic tag removed and to get his passport back so he could visit his mother in Lanzarote.

“That was my entire wealth,” he said. “The police’s chins dropped when I paid it.”

Mr Atherton said he thought the police demanded the “ridiculously high” figure, thinking he would never be able to pay it. He also thought the investigation was less than thorough because the alleged incident was captured on CCTV.

Mr Atherton sold Dabs.com in 2006 for an estimated £30 million, realising the dot com bubble was about to burst.

He said: “I realised that it was a boom and it wouldn’t last forever.

“I was early with the website and I realised that everyone else would catch up with me, so I thought I’d better sell before everybody got a website.”

He first became interested in electronics as a child, when he used to buy DIY circuit board kits. But he would never follow the instructions, instead, tinkering with the designs to try to improve them.

He said: “I always changed them and made them a bit different. Doing what it said in the instructions was no challenge.”

He said he had a happy childhood with lots of friends, but he was not very good at football because he had short legs.

He did play the piano, however, a hobby which he still pursues today.

During his first proper job, working for the Inland Revenue, he made more money selling articles about computing to magazines than the government wage he earned.

This led him to setting up Dabs Press, a computer guidebook publishing business, then Dabs Direct, a mail order company and, eventually, Dabs.com For a man who once made number 547 in the Sunday Times rich list, Mr Atherton celebrated his acquittal in a surprisingly low-key fashion, having a drink in his local pub, then heading to the J2 nightclub in Bradshawgate.

He said: “Many people shook my hand and said we always knew you were innocent.”