UK: Jail for Sainsbury's potato scammers
Maylam received 4 years imprisonment, whilst Behagg received 3 years and Baxter 30 months.
Maylam and Baxter both pleaded guilty to charges of money laundering and corruption, whilst Behagg protested his innocence, claiming to be a victim of extortion.
Maylam and Baxter siphoned off £4.9m into foreign bank accounts by overcharging Sainsbury’s on a number of high-volume potato lines supplied by Greenvale, particularly baking and Charlotte varieties.
Maylam also received excessive corporate hospitality, including trips to Monaco and the South of France, and outings on a luxury yacht. At one point, Maylam purchased a £94,000 black Aston Martin from money conned out of Sainsbury’s.
Detective Superintendent Tony Crampton, of the City of London Police, said Maylam and Baxter were in receipt of good salaries at the time of becoming involved in the crimes.
"They cooked up an elaborate fraud that saw them divert seven-figure sums from their employers’ accounts," he said. "They were greedy for a luxury lifestyle – frittering the money away on frivolous spending only made possible by Behagg’s complicity."
A spokeswoman for Sainsbury’s said it was pleased justice had been done. "Today’s sentencing sends a very clear message to anyone that behaves in this way that there are consequences to their actions," she said. "We demand the highest standards of all our colleagues and suppliers and Sainsbury’s code of conduct clearly details how we expect them to behave, and is reinforced by our confidential whistle-blowing line."
A spokesman for Greenvale's parent company, Produce Investments, which acquired the company in 2006, said that it did not tolerate any form of bribery or corruption in its operations.
"We would like to point out that we instigated the investigation in early 2008 and Andrew Behagg and David Baxter ceased to be Greenvale employees shortly thereafter," said a spokesperson for the organisation.
"Since 2008 we have introduced strict new procedures to make sure that such abuse is now impossible. Consequently our relationship with Sainsbury’s is on a sound footing."
Source: www.theguardian.co.uk
