£350,000 charity thief forced to sell his castle
AN ARCHITECT who embezzled hundreds of thousands of pounds from a charity is being forced to sell his historic castle in a bid to pay the cash back.
Ian Brash stole more than £350,000 from the Dr Robert Malcolm Trust, which provides financial help to medical students and doctors.
The 66-year-old had been a trustee of the charity, which was set up by a philanthropic relative, for more than 15 years before he began pilfering cash from its bank account. The retired architect splashed out on an Alfa Romeo and two new Land Rovers and paid tens of thousands to fund deposits for buy-to-let properties for his son and daughter.
He also bought a wind turbine and paid off large vet bills.
The OSCR charity regulator became ‘concerned about the movement of funds’ from the charity’s account to Brash’s own account in 2012 and an inquiry began. He claimed he was using his account to buy shares for the benefit of the charity but failed to provide any evidence.
The father of two is now having to sell 15th-century Fa’side Castle, near Tranent, East Lothian, to raise funds to pay back the stolen cash.
The four-storey castle has six bedrooms, four reception rooms and a great hall. A brochure prepared for the sale lists the price as offers over £1.9 million. Brash and his wife Sue have run it as a bed and breakfast.
Brash faces a possible custodial sentence after he admitted embezzling £358,832 from the trust between 2010 and 2014, when he appeared at Edinburgh Sheriff Court last year.
Sheriff Frank Crowe has twice deferred sentence to allow the shamed businessman time to sell his family home, where he and his wife have lived for 30 years.
He is due to be sentenced in April. Sheriff Crowe heard an agreed narration into the facts of the case and was told the charity was set up in 1987 by one of Brash’s relatives, a Janie Millar, who had inherited around £1 million from her uncle Robert Malcolm’s estate.
Miss Millar made grants of between £250 and £1,000 to ten to 15 applicants to the charity each year.
She asked Brash to become a trustee in 1989 and he set up an investment company which was to be solely used to raise funds for the charity.
Miss Millar died in 2002, leaving Brash as sole trustee, and four years later his children Vicki and Greig were also made trustees.
The charity bought a property in Windermere, Cumbria, for £172,018 in 1995 and after Brash had taken sole control of the charity’s finances the house was sold for £500,000.
He transferred most of the cash into the trading company account before moving large sums into a personal share-dealing account.
The money was used to buy shares, with the profits transferred into his own bank account. Brash claimed the charity cash had become ‘mixed up’ with his own money.
He could not be contacted for comment.
‘Concerned about the movement of funds’