Yorkshire company director and former NHS chairman and charity trustee sentenced for £27,000 fraud

A Yorkshire company director and former NHS chairman has been sentenced for defrauding a not-for-profit organisation out of £27,000.

Hugh Richard Vaughan Morgan-Williams OBE, 70, of North Riding Rise, Thornton-le-Moor, near Thirsk, was sentenced at Teesside Crown Court today in relation to an offence committed while chair of probation service Durham and Tees Valley Community Rehabilitation Company.

He pleaded guilty to the charge after six other counts against him were discontinued due to a lack of evidence. They included allegations that he had committed fraud and false accounting while sole trustee of the Cowesby Trust, a small parish charity in a village near Thirsk.

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The court was told that Morgan-Williams, who has no previous convictions, had held a number of executive and non-executive positions at charities and not-for-profit organisations during his career. He was appointed non-executive chair of the Durham and Tees Valley Community Rehabilitation Company in 2015.

Hugh Morgan-Williams, right, opening a hospital dementia unit during his role as an NHS chairman in 2014Hugh Morgan-Williams, right, opening a hospital dementia unit during his role as an NHS chairman in 2014
Hugh Morgan-Williams, right, opening a hospital dementia unit during his role as an NHS chairman in 2014

Prosecutors said there was ‘concern from the board at the outset’ that Morgan-Williams had ‘forced’ himself into the role, and soon after he contacted a friend who ran a technology company and told him that they would require new ICT infrastructure. He negotiated a 10 per cent commission for himself if a contract was awarded, which it duly was.

Morgan-Williams then took a £26,966 cut of the £305,000 fee by submitting invoices from a consultancy run by himself that had not been authorised.

The CPS said: “This was a clear breach of position. He pocketed the consultancy fees and never made declarations of interest. There was no formal tendering process undertaken. The money was paid into his Coutts bank account.”

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The court was also told that Morgan-Williams was removed from his position soon after due to ‘other concerns about his conduct’.

Morgan-Williams’ defence counsel urged Judge Howard Crowson not to jail the businessman, who was made OBE in 2008, and said that he and his wife were both in poor health. His four children had ‘shunned’ him as a result of the investigation.

He added: “There was a sense of entitlement, and he was under increasing financial pressure; reason and logic went out of the window. This is a man who has succeeded in business. It is a real fall from grace and his position in society. He was able, through his success, to fund a standard of life that was rapidly changing. He had set himself up with a great financial commitment, but he has not worked since 2016. He has lost friends and associates. The chances of him working again are remote.

"His son and three daughters have turned their backs on him because of the pain he has put their mother through.”

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Sentencing Morgan-Williams to 17 months in prison suspended for 12 months, Judge Crowson said: “I am not sending you to prison, though you have acted in a way which merits prison. On the other six counts, I find you not guilty.

"But you used your position as director to make a profit for yourself. This was pre-planned. You concealed by pretence with invoices suggesting services provided. You held and abused a trusted position.

"You justified this by saying that nobody was going to lose out, but the company overpaid; they could have got what they paid for for £27,000 less.

"However, you present no danger to the public and have good prospects of rehabilitation. Prison would have a harmful impact on others. It is quite rare to impose a sentence with no further requirements, but you have experienced a high level of punishment already, and feel responsible for the estrangement within your family.”

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Morgan-Williams has been the director of a number of companies, including Queen Mary’s, a fee-paying girls’ boarding school near Thirsk, from 2003-2016. He was also chair of the Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust.