Boss used company card for holidays and records

Sean Forster was given a suspended sentence at Newcastle Crown Court

A transport boss used his company credit card to pay for holidays, garden furniture and music records in a £100,000 fraud, a court has heard.

Sean Forster, a former managing director in an area of Arriva, fraudulently used his corporate credit card for five years in a "culture" of executives using company cards for personal use, Newcastle Crown Court heard.

Forster, 60 and from Ashington, Northumberland, had worked at Arriva since 1993 and been appointed managing director in 2014 for which he was paid a six-figure sum, the court heard.

He admitted fraud and was jailed for two years suspended for two years with 300 hours unpaid work.

Forster, of Rothbury Drive, was given the card to be used for purchases in the "ordinary course of business", such as booking travel and paying for hotels and hospitality when he was working, prosecutor Rachel Kelly said.

But between 2017 and 2022, Forster used his card for "personal expenditure" including rental properties, music records, groceries, holidays and garden furnishings, the court heard.

He was sacked after his spending came to light in December 2022, Ms Kelly said.

'Trusted not to steal'

In mitigation, Jane Foley said there was a "culture of tolerance if not endorsement" for executives to use company cards for personal use where departments were "performing well financially".

"It did become an implied perk of the role rather than a deliberate act of deceit," Ms Foley said.

She said Forster never tried to hide his purchases and was never asked to supply receipts, adding it was an "institutional blind spot".

Ms Foley said Forster knew it was wrong but "drifted into a pattern of behaviour that wrongly had come to be seen as acceptable among his peers".

She said he now faced a "lifetime of financial ruin and personal shame", having been made the subject of a civil court judgement from Arriva demanding full repayment and had his assets frozen, although the court heard he had since landed another senior management role elsewhere.

Recorder Thomas Moran said junior members of his team had wanted to speak up about the fraud but "felt unable to say anything" due to Forster's seniority.

Probation officers who spoke to Forster had formed the view there was a "culture of spending on corporate credit cards" and it was "surprising" there was no audit done, the judge said.

But, he added, Forster "should have been trusted not to steal from the company, whether it was easy or not".

Speaking after the sentencing, a spokeswoman for Arriva said the fraud had been identified by "robust systems and controls in place" and the firm was in the process of trying to recover the money.

She said: "As a responsible employer, we expect the highest standards of business conduct and do not tolerate any abuse of our policies."