Ex-bank chairman to be sentenced for fraud after handing himself in
A warrant was issued for the arrest of Paul Flowers after he failed to turn up to a hearing on February 14.
Disgraced former Co-operative Bank chairman Paul Flowers will be sentenced for fraud after he handed himself in to the police following a warrant for his arrest.
In July last year, Flowers, 74, pleaded guilty to a catalogue of fraud, amounting to nearly £100,000, when he abused his position as the executor of the will, and holder of power of attorney, for a woman named Margaret Jarvis.
On February 14, Flowers did not turn up to his sentencing hearing at Manchester Crown Court and Judge Nicholas Dean KC issued a warrant not backed for bail.
Three days later, he handed himself in to police and was remanded in custody to be sentenced on Thursday.
Judge Dean said, earlier this month, that an immediate custodial sentence could be “almost inevitable” for an offence over a sustained period involving a “vulnerable victim”.
Flowers, from Salford, was dubbed the “Crystal Methodist” after The Mail on Sunday newspaper published secretly filmed footage of the then-church minister handing over £300 in cash for crystal meth and other drugs in Leeds in November 2013.
He pleaded guilty at Leeds Magistrates’ Court to possessing cocaine, crystal meth and ketamine and was fined £400.
Earlier in 2023, Flowers had stood down as chairman of the Co-Operative Bank, a post he had held for more than three years, after a £1.5 billion black hole was discovered in its finances.
The former Labour councillor in Rochdale and Bradford was later banned from the financial services industry after the City watchdog found he demonstrated a “lack of fitness and propriety required” to work in the sector.
The Financial Conduct Authority concluded he used his work mobile telephone to make a number of inappropriate telephone calls to a premium-rate chat line and used his work email account to send and receive sexually explicit and otherwise inappropriate messages, and to discuss illegal drugs.