Former Co-operative Bank chairman Paul Flowers – who stole nearly £100,000 from an elderly spinster to spend on drugs, holidays and gifts for himself – has been jailed for three years.
Flowers, 74, had betrayed his friend of many years, Margaret Jarvis, to plunder her cash, Manchester Crown Court heard.
Flowers, a former Labour councillor and church minister, dubbed the “Crystal Methodist” after a newspaper drugs sting, had been made power of attorney and executor of the will of Miss Jarvis, a teetotal retired teacher, who never married and had no children.
His public profile helped his friend trust him with her affairs, the court heard.
But as Miss Jarvis’s dementia progressed and she could no longer look after her own money, Flowers began controlling her accounts and using her cash for his own selfish ends, the court heard.
And he continued taking her cash after her death, aged 82, in 2016 in a care home near Amersham, Buckinghamshire.
Flowers, from Salford, Greater Manchester, had admitted 18 counts of fraud at an earlier hearing, amounting to nearly £100,000 over a two-year period ending in 2017.
The defendant was brought into court using a walking stick. He had handed himself in to police after a judge had issued a warrant for his arrest when he failed to appear for his sentencing two weeks ago.
Passing sentence Judge Nicholas Dean KC, Recorder of Manchester, said: “This is a story of betrayal, no less than that. Betrayal by you of an old friend, someone who trusted you, who had every reason to believe she could trust you.
“In truth, you knew all along she could not, because of your own weaknesses and failings.”
