Army officer acquitted of £100,000 school fees fraud

A COLONEL who claimed almost £100,000 in Army allowances to send his children to public school has been acquitted of fraud by a court martial.

Five senior officers, a lieutenant general, two brigadiers and two colonels, found Col Roddy Lee, 52, not guilty after a seven-day trial in Bulford, Wiltshire.

After the hearing, Lewis Cherry, Col Lee’s solicitor, said: “He is greatly relieved that this matter is now at an end.

“He has always protested his innocence and the trial has shown that he acted completely within the rules.”

Mr Cherry criticised the decision to bring the case, describing the investigation by the Royal Military Police as “flawed”.

“I was astonished that this prosecution was brought at all, it went against sheer common sense when the evidence was considered as a whole,” Mr Cherry added. Col Lee claimed £98,306.80 during the 2015-16 academic year to send two of his children to Marlborough College and two to prep schools in Wiltshire and Dorset.

The Army’s continuity of education allowance enables service personnel to send children to boarding school to prevent disruption caused by postings around the UK and abroad.

Prosecutors claimed Col Lee became ineligible for the allowance because he was posted to Army headquarters at Andover, Hampshire, in 2015 which was less than 50 miles from his family home at Littleton Panell, near Devizes, Wiltshire.

Col Lee denied living at the family home and said he wanted service accommodation in Hampshire because of the future uncertainty of his posting and whether he would be working in Andover, Whitehall or Aldershot

He said this would help his wife who was a medical student in London at the time. She had placements in the South East and now works as a junior doctor.