Judiciary & Court
UK pastor Sam Kayode faces 8 extra years in prison for stealing £4million
Shamed school accountant and part-time pastor Sam Kayode faces an extra eight years in prison unless he pays almost £3million in ten days.
Kayode, 61, was jailed in 2016 for nine years for taking £4million from the Haberdashers’ Aske’s state school chain, MailOnline reports.
The married father of four, who had three mistresses, tried to blame the theft on his late wife Grace and a young assistant, claiming they had transferred money to his account in a bid to smear him over his adulteries.
Now his sentence has been almost doubled after barrister James Thacker, acting for the Crown Prosecution Service’s specialist fraud division, told a proceeds of crime confiscation hearing that he had spirited away around £3million, probably to Nigeria and Dubai.
The lovers he showered with gifts might also face legal action.
READ: Premium Times on smear campaign over N10bn fraud report – Kemi Adeosun
The hearing at Woolwich Crown Court earlier this month was told that after Kayode joined Haberdashers’ Aske’s in 1997, it expanded enormously and embraced ‘academy’ reforms that gave schools more control over their finances.
Judge Nicholas Heathcote Williams said in his new judgment: ‘Over nearly seven years Kayode stole and defrauded over £4million from Haberdashers’ by transferring money from their account to his and his wife Grace’s.’
His boss, chief financial officer Paul Durgan, failed to notice any money was missing. Kayode was caught only when a school cleaner spotted bank account statements in his office.
The accountant earned £57,000 a year for his work at the chain’s south-east London schools, but drove a fleet of cars including several Mercedes, an Audi TT and a £40,000 Infiniti, carried a £1,500 Louis Vuitton briefcase and wore £500 Gucci shoes.