Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.
AIA

Army accountant jailed for £21,000 theft

by
31st Jan 2014
Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.

An accountant from the North West has been jailed for 16 months for stealing more than £21,350 from a soldiers’ fund.

Captain Simon Mercer from Heswell received his sentence at Southwark Crown Court last week, after he admitted taking the money to pay for £1,000 a night “high-class” escorts, the Wirral Globe reported.

They money had been raised for the Royal Engineers regiment of the British Army from the sale of a rare painting found at barracks in Catford.

The Royal Engineers are involved in explosive ordinance disposal and many of their roles are on the front line in Afghanistan.

The painting, a Jasper Cropsey late 1800s piece, was sold for £1.5m in 2009 and the money was deposited in a high interest investment account, 

The court heard that the fund yielded £40,000 per year and was used by the regiment for training exercises and emergency loans for soldiers to attend funerals at home.

The painting was found in territorial army barracks - and when the TA and regular army merged, so did their bank accounts. Mercer was told to close the separate TA account and direct interest payments into the new, central account. But, he failed to do so and wrote unlawful cheques from this account, the court heard.

Last year, auditors discovered the account was still open and the accountant was then arrested, prosecutor Peter Zinner said.

He admitted that he had “succumbed to temptation”, the court heard, and said that he had taken the money while intoxicated and spent the funds on hotel rooms, escorts and high class prostitutes.

Mercer had previously worked for the regular Army Pay Corps at the Wimbish Base in Essex and has “significant understanding of accounting procedures", the Wirral Globe reported.

The paper said he was remorseful in court for his crime and had known the consequence of his actions. He has been in the army for 28 years and has served in Cyprus, Kosovo and Northern Ireland.

Tags:

Replies (0)

Please login or register to join the discussion.

There are currently no replies, be the first to post a reply.