NY- A British publishing executive told a lurid tale yesterday of being pistol-whipped, slashed and jolted in the genitals by mobsters sending a message to his boss.

“We’re here because we want our money back!” Philip Bailey remembered the thugs saying. “It’s a small trip across the pond. Tell your boss he’s a dead man!”

The warning was accompanied by a sadistic beating, Bailey told Federal Judge Carol Amon.

Telling his story for the first time, Bailey, 51, a former marketing director for British publisher Richard Desmond, said he came to New York in October 1992 to visit potential distributors for Desmond’s porn magazines.

He got into an airport limousine, thinking it had been sent by one of the distributors. Then he saw a man with a gun standing near a wall as the limo slowed, he said.

“I shouted to the driver that a guy had a gun and was getting into the car. I tried to hold the door shut, but the driver ignored me,” he said. As the thug pistol-whipped him, Bailey said, he tried to flee but ran into the other assailant armed with a stun gun.

“The pistol-whipping didn’t stop me from being agitated,” Bailey said. “So he decided to jab me in the testicles.”

The thugs were allegedly sent by reputed Gambino soldier Richard Martino, who was furious that Desmond was cheating him out of $1 million in ad revenue.

Prosecutors hope Bailey’s testimony persuades Amon to sentence Martino to a maximum 10 years for threatening Desmond in September 1992.