A former recruiter on trial for conspiracy to defraud the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) told a court of his million-pound home, collection of fast cars and a visit to a Swiss bank that reminded him of James Bond films.

Stephen Lawrence, who is accused along with Mark Starling of conspiring to defraud the bank, told Southwark Crown Court he had owned cars including four Porsches, a Mercedes, a Range Rover and a Lotus. His house was worth £1.1m, he added.

During an extraordinary spell in the witness box, Lawrence told the court he had set up a Swiss bank account in December 2005 “to put some money aside for his daughter”.

“They wanted a half-million pound deposit,” said Lawrence, who compared a visit to the bank to “something out of James Bond”.

“I’m told the Swiss banking system has the highest level of security in the world and I was given my own personal banker. It was just like you see in the films.”

Lawrence also testified that his account was handled with much discretion, and the bank used coded messages to represent money in email correspondence to him. “They would send something like ‘Thirty bags of potatoes have landed in your account’,” he said.

Lawrence and Starling, both from the Chelmsford area, deny conspiring to defraud RBS by entering false details into an invoice finance programme while directors of IT recruiter Quo Vadis Technology Ltd. The trial continues.