The wife of convicted con-man Paul Parmar who cheated construction firms out of nearly £1million, claimed that she was as much a victim of his as the firms he rooked.

Taking the witness box at Isleworth Crown Court, Sonal Parmar, 29, of whom little has been heard in the six week trial, told the jury she firmly believed he was earning vast sums and that they could easily afford the half-million pound house in Bushey and the thousands of pounds worth of luxury goods.

Paul Parmar, fresh out of prison for similar offences and with no qualifications, would get work as a highly paid quantity surveyor and funnel huge sums to two sub-contractors for very little or no work at all.

Parmar, 37, has admitted his part in the £1m fraud practiced on three companies which employed him as a quantity surveyor despite a complete absence of qualifications. They are Frederick Sage & Co, Coffey Construction Ltd of Southgate and Pel Project Management Ltd of Oldbury in Birmingham.

Although Paul Parmar did secure salaries up to £50,000 a year plus cars and other perks, Sonal told the court she thought he was earning as much as £147,000 in his final post with PPM. She also thought he was earning large sums of money from the company he persuaded Bhalla to set up ADL and which paid her £56,000 despite her doing no work for them.

"Paul said it was done like that to avoid paying tax. The company had only just been set up and he told me it was doing rather well. I didn't query it".

Neither did she query it when she completed a BUPA health insurance form to add her to the company scheme or the fact she was added to the company pension scheme. She agreed she never worked at ADL's plush premises in Kershaw House, Hounslow.

Neither did she query it when ADL paid £200,000 towards their house in Bushey and Parmar took out a mortgage for £300,000.

When police searched the Parmar home in Harrow, they found thousands of pounds worth of designer luxury goods, many of them still in their boxes. They also found all the receipts, carefully kept by Sonal Parmar. She spent about £50,000 on such goods as shoes, coats and accessories with all the big labels Gucci, Prada, Luis Vuiton etc in the first half of 2002. But, she told the court, she had no reason not to because her husband was "doing so well".

When the bubble finally burst and Paul Parmar was arrested, she was angry and distressed to discover from police that he had previous convictions for similar frauds. When things started going wrong, she was made to complete forms for loans. She claimed that her husband made her fill in the forms, even threatening her with violence and hitting her once.

The prosecution maintained that as Sonal Parmar had worked in the construction industry she should have been well aware of the sort of salaries paid. But she claimed throughout three days in the witness box that she took her husband's word almost until the day he left her and their baby son in August 2002.

The trial, which is likely to finish at the end of next week, continues.