Fire chief bought £13k Land Rover for £500 at ‘dishonest’ auction
A chief fire officer acted as "both auctioneer and bidder" to fraudulently buy one of his brigade's Land Rovers, which had new tyres worth more than the £500 he paid for it, a court has heard.
Birmingham Crown Court was told Stewart Edgar dishonestly turned down a rival £8,250 bid for the 15-year-old Defender vehicle, after telling a colleague he had always wanted a red Land Rover for his daughter's wedding.
Prosecutors allege the 53-year-old Scot, the former head of Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue Service, abused the chief fire officer's post to commit the fraud in 2018.
Opening the Crown's case yesterday, the prosecutor, Robin Shellard, alleged that Edgar asked a firm based in
Ayrshire in Scotland to lodge a £500 bid on his behalf, in an email stating that the process was "all above board".
The jury, sitting in a Nightingale (temporary) court at offices in Birmingham city centre, was told Edgar then lied during an investigation, claiming to have paid a £1,000 deposit for the Land Rover after another bid was lodged too late.
Mr Shellard told the court: "He couldn't bid himself for any number of reasons - he wasn't a registered bidder and also there would be a clear conflict of interest as he was in charge of the bidding process.
"What he did was to get somebody else who was a registered bidder to bid on his behalf without telling anybody what he was doing.
"This was not all above board - he had kept what he was doing from those who should know.
"That, we say, was patently dishonest because he was both auctioneer and bidder so Mr Edgar won the auction and he got the Land Rover for £500."
Such a low bid was under any realistic value for the "mint condition" 2003 Defender with 19,000 miles on the clock, Mr Shellard said.
Telling jurors that an online valuation check had shown the Land Rover to have a partexchange value of £11,500 and sale price of £13,000, Mr Shellard added: "It was pointed out that the tyres were probably worth more than £500 alone on that vehicle."
Edgar, of Carnoustie, Angus, denies a single count of fraud by abuse of position alleged to have been committed between April 1 and May 1, 2018.