The former chairman of the Co-operative bank, Paul Flowers, has been sentenced to three years behind bars after stealing nearly £100,000 from an elderly spinster to spend on drugs and holidays.
Flowers, 74, betrayed his long-term friend, Margaret Jarvis, and stole the vast sum of money to fund his spending spree, Manchester Crown Court heard today.
A former Labour councillor and church minister, Flowers was previously nicknamed the ‘Crystal Methodist’ after a newspaper drugs sting.
The 74-year-old had been made power of attorney and executor of the will of Miss Jarvis, a teetotal retired teacher, who never married and had no children.
Flowers enjoyed a public profile which he used to gain the trust of his friend and to help manage her affairs, the court heard.
Moreover, following Miss Jarvis’s dementia diagnosis and the subsequent worsening of her condition, the pensioner was unable to look after her own money.
This presented Flowers with the opportunity to step in and begin controlling her accounts.
He went on to siphon off almost £100,000 for his own selfish ends up and continued to do so even following her death at the age of 82 in 2016.
Flowers admitted to 18 counts of fraud at an earlier hearing which occurred over a two-year period ending in 2017.
The defendant was brought into court using a walking stick. He had handed himself in to police after a judge had issued a warrant for his arrest when he failed to appear for his sentencing two weeks ago.
Passing sentence Judge Nicholas Dean KC, Recorder of Manchester, said: ‘This is a story of betrayal, no less than that. Betrayal by you of an old friend, someone who trusted you, who had every reason to believe she could trust you.
‘In truth, you knew all along she could not, because of your own weaknesses and failings.’
