Serco bosses ‘got accomplice to fake £3m bill’
Two former Serco bosses faked a bill for £3 million in costs as they fleeced the Ministry of Justice in a tagging fraud, a court heard.
Nicholas Woods, 51, and Simon Marshall, 59, encouraged an alleged accomplice, who cannot be named, to submit fictional costs to the MoJ between 2011 and 2013.
Woods is the former finance director of Serco Home Affairs and Marshall is the former operations director of field services.
Prosecutor Michael Bowes said the two executives’ unnamed co-conspirator submitted a financial report to the MoJ with costs that never occurred.
‘The amounts being made up are, we submit, greater than those submitted historically, and the false costs are in three categories.
‘There is not support for any of those charges and they were not invoiced as individual items,’ said Mr Bowes.
‘On the 11 August a co-conspirator submitted the financial model containing £3 million worth of false costs to the MoJ by email.
‘Following that he provided a password in a separate email and then confirmed the submission to Mr Woods.’
Jurors were told that some costs submitted to the MoJ were ‘manually allocated’ rather than arising from legitimate expenses.
They were split into different categories such as equipment, salary costs and management cost so as to ‘not attract MoJ suspicion’, it is said.
The prosecutor said that an investigation did not reveal any ‘underlying support’ for the costs.
Woods and Marshall tried to conceal Serco’s high profit margin to stop the MoJ reclaiming money on behalf of the taxpayer, it is said.
Jurors heard costs were falsely repeated on behalf of Serco, reducing the company’s true profits from £27 million to £15 million.
The pair allegedly encouraged their co-conspirator to declare costs to the MoJ which never actually occurred.
As part of the contract, Serco was obliged to submit a regular financial report on the project to the ministry, the court heard.
But the information in that report was ‘false, misleading or fictitious’, the jury was told.
‘The information in that financial model had to be given to the MoJ, under the contract, had to be true and accurate, not false, misleading or fictitious,’ said the prosecutor.
The court heard that those reports were important to the MoJ in order ascertain whether the contracted companies gave realistic reports of their costs.
‘Even more simply, what the financial model does is to give the MoJ confidence that the taxpayer does not pay too much for the tagging services supplied by Serco,’ said Mr Bowes.
Marshall, of Llanvair Drive, Ascot, Berkshire, and Woods of Worminghall Road, Ickford, Bucks, both deny fraud by false representation.
Marshall denies two additional counts of fraud by false representation.
The trial continues
ends
