MoD man jailed over pounds 1.3m bribes

A FORMER Ministry of Defence official who took pounds 1.3m in bribes from three foreign armaments companies for ammunition contracts was jailed for four years yesterday at Snaresbrook Crown Court in east London, writes Ian MacKinnon.

Judge Andrew Brooks also ordered that Gordon Foxley's assets acquired as a result of the corruption, amounting to more than pounds 1.5m, should be handed over and sold within 18 months. He warned Foxley that he would serve an additional three years in prison if he failed to do that.

Passing sentence, however, the judge said there was no evidence to show that Foxley's corruption - between 1979 and 1984 - had caused the MoD any loss, or forced Royal Ordnance to cut staff or close down plants when contracts went abroad. But for that, and 69- year-old Foxley's age and bad heart, the sentence passed would have been six years, the judge said.

Foxley, of Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, was convicted last November of taking bribes from Italian, German and Norwegian companies, and channelling the money into Swiss bank accounts which were linked to 'buffer' companies designed to distance him from the money.

Over an eight-year period more than pounds 3.5m was deposited in a bank account held in the name of his son, Paul, at Barclays in Twyford, Hampshire. The money - linked to another company in Guernsey, Technical Associates, of which Foxley was a signatory - was used to buy property and cars, and provide loans for him and his family.

Foxley was said to have derived a total benefit of pounds 2.1m from his corrupt practices. The judge, however, ordered that eight properties valued at pounds 1.3m - some used by his seven children - should be seized as they were paid for from the proceeds of his corruption.

Loans totalling pounds 89,000 to his children, four of them serving in the Army, were also ordered seized along with his bank balances of pounds 3,000, five cars worth pounds 30,000 and a car number plate, SLY3, valued at pounds 3,000.

Fruits of crime, page 2

(Photograph omitted)