An official has been jailed for five years after defrauding the Church of England out of £5.2m and spending the profits on a lavish lifestyle
Martin Sargeant, who was the clerk for the City Church grants committee charitable trust, stole an estimated £5.2m between January 2009 and December 2019, making multiple false applications for maintenance grants to fund his own lavish lifestyle.
Sargeant, from Bournemouth, had worked at the trust for 11 years. He was responsible for the upkeep of 33 city churches, some of which were classed as ‘dysfunctional’ and had no vicar.
He received the funds from large City developments near churches, to which he appropriated for his own gain.
Southwark Crown Court heard that as a result of the fraud, many City churches had not been able to maintain their buildings and some had closed their doors to the public.
The diocese had said that there was no suspicion or evidence of criminality until last year, when the London Diocesan Fund (LDF) made a report to the Action Fraud unit of the police, and a serious incident report to the Charity Commission, after a parish raised concerns about funds they had not received.
Prosecutor Joey Kwong said: ‘It is clear that the funds were lavished on his lifestyle. By the end of the fraud, he had assets of more than £450,000 across personal bank accounts, as well as three properties in Scotland worth approximately £1m.
‘He lavished money on multiple trips abroad and there was lavish spending in terms of his lifestyle.’
Sargeant had booked a total of 158 flights with British Airways throughout the fraud, visiting destinations including New York, Miami, the Maldives, Venice, Barcelona and Rome.
His properties included six riverside log cabins, which he rented out as a business, while he made more than £600,000 of investments and spent over £1m on credit cards.
He also spent thousands of pounds on clothes from fashion brands Ted Baker and Burberry and over three months in 2013 spent more than £30,000 at the five-star Soho Hotel.
The court found that throughout the fraud, Sargeant had spent just £1,500 on the church and that although prosecutors agreed he had a ‘gambling problem’ it was ‘not the main driver in the offending – it’s greed’.
Sargeant was jailed for five years, having previously pleaded guilty to a count of fraud by abuse of position between 1 January 2009 and 31 December 2019. He denied a further count of money laundering.
Judge Michael Grieve KC said: ‘This was a sophisticated fraud carried out systematically over a period of 11 years resulting in a massive loss to the churches of the City of London, which they could ill afford.’
In 1992, Sargent was handed a community order for theft by an employee and was jailed for 21 months in 1995 for offences including 19 counts of theft.
The court heard the convictions related to his previous employers, including a shoe shop and a bar, which he claimed to have disclosed to the Church of England before he was employed – an assertion the church was neither confirmed nor denied.
He became head of operations in 2007 as a contractor with the Archdeaconry of London, initially earning £56,000 and rising to around £86,000 before his retirement in 2019 – a total salary of £750,000 over the period of the fraud.
Richard Perry, chair of the London Diocesan Fund’s Audit and Risk Committee, said: ‘Following the reporting of our concerns to the authorities in 2021, our priority was to support their enquiries and, with the legal proceedings now concluded, we are continuing to work with the Police to secure the defrauded funds.’
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