Court demands £1.5m over charity fraud
PROSECUTORS are seeking to recover more than £1.5million from a retired architect who embezzled hundreds of thousands of pounds from a charity.
Ian Brash, 66, stole more than £350,000 from the Dr Robert Malcolm Trust, which provides financial help to medical students and doctors.
Edinburgh Sheriff Court heard that Brash had been a trustee of the charity for more than 15 years before he began pocketing money from the organisation’s bank account.
The pensioner used the cash to buy an Alfa Romeo and two new Land Rovers and gave his children tens of thousands of pounds for deposits on buy-to-let properties.
Appearing before Sheriff Frank Crowe in August last year, Brash pleaded guilty to embezzling £358,832 from the charity between Aug 12 2010 and Sept 10 2014.
The court heard that the retired architect is trying to sell his 15th-century Fa’side Castle in East Lothian to raise funds to pay back the cash.
Yesterday it emerged that prosecution lawyers are using proceeds of crime legislation to seek £1,590,512.69 from Brash. Sheriff Crowe deferred sentencing Brash until July 15.
The charity was set up in 1987 by Janie Millar who had inherited around £1million from an uncle’s estate. She made grants of between £250 and £1,000 to 10 to 15 applicants each year.
She asked Brash, a relative, to become a trustee in the late Eighties. When Miss Millar died in 2002, Brash became the sole trustee.
The court heard how the charity bought a property in Windermere, Cumbria, for £172,018 in 1995 and after Brash had taken control of the charity’s finances, it 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.
‘He used the cash to buy an Alfa Romeo and two new Land Rovers and gave his children tens of thousands’
Daily Telegraph Reporter