‘Pure selfish greed’ of Age Concern boss who stole £700,000
AN AGE Concern executive who showed ‘pure selfish greed’ to steal £ 707,500 meant for the elderly was jailed for seven years yesterday.
John Briers, 57, splashed out on expensive foreign holidays and cars and even horses for his children.
For eight years, Briers made a mockery of the charity’s mission statement to ‘ inspire, enable and support older people’ as he raided the coffers of the South Tyneside branch he ran, causing so much damage it had to close down.
Briers – already on a salary of £72,000 – set out to make sure his twilight years would be lived out in luxury by making 19 separate payments into his pension pot to the tune of almost £170,000.
He also paid 60 charity cheques into his bank account and awarded himself 12 unauthorised bonuses.
His ‘ handsome’ monthly wage was often dwarfed by the amounts he stole, Judge Timothy Gittins told Newcastle Crown Court.
Graham Cassidy, the Age Concern manager who discovered his dishonesty, said after yesterday’s hearing: ‘ He liked the best of everything. He holidayed at the Sandals resort in Barbados and then after that Dubai became his favourite destination.
‘His three children had cars and horses. He made sure his family wanted for nothing while he was stealing from some of the most vulnerable people in society.’
Age Concern, which is now part of Age UK, is the country’s largest charity for the elderly.
Briers, who lived in a large home in Gateshead and drove a top-ofthe-range £50,000 Volvo XC90, was convicted of fraud from January 2007 to August 2015 when he was the chief executive at Age Concern South Tyneside. On top of the money he stole, additional costs incurred as a result of his actions brought the total loss to the charity to £1.3million.
Six staff were made redundant and four had their hours reduced as the branch closed down due to the loss of trust from the public.
A jury was told last month that Briers was suspended from his job when Mr Cassidy noticed a document for one of the payments he had made was littered with mistakes. During a search of Briers’ office, investigators found templates of blank invoices for firms the charity had worked with.
Anthony Dunne, prosecuting, told the court: ‘He made most of those payments simply by writing out cheques to himself. He then covered his tracks by pretending that those fraudulent payments were either payments to companies who had supplied goods and services to Age Concern or bonus payments approved by the charity’s board of trustees or special payments, also agreed by the board, or a sub-committee of the board.
‘The defendant created false documents to explain those fraudulent payments.’
Judge Gittins told Briers: ‘These were truly staggering amounts. Your salary – which let no one misunderstand was a handsome one – was equalled and sometimes dwarfed by the sums you were taking dishonestly. It equated to 15 to 20 per cent of the gross income of the charity. You acted out of pure selfish greed to cushion with extravagance your life and that of your family now and into a planned retirement.’
The judge noted Briers’ devotion to his Catholic Church but added he indulged in ‘ wholly un-Christian behaviour’.
Judge Gittins said: ‘You showed not a single iota of remorse, on the contrary you sought to justify these eye-watering sums as being entirely deserved.’
He said the sums stolen were ‘breathtaking’, with cheques ranging from £1,000 to £10,000 at a time paid directly into Briers’ bank.
Christopher Rose, defending, said: ‘He has suffered significant depression and despair since these matters came to light. He is very aware of what this has done to his wife and children.’
‘Staggering amounts’