A MAN employed to oversee a health trust’s expenditure stole £45,500 from it - after inventing a fictitious creditor.

Payments for £32,500 and £13,000 were made by Durham and Darlington Primary Care Trust for services supplied by a company called Bariatrics UK, in August and December 2010.

But, Durham Crown Court heard the company did not exist and the account the money was paid into was found to be that of the trust’s former senior management accountant Victor Mukula.

The court was told Mukula had left the trust after three years, in 2011, receiving a redundancy payment of £39,318.

Jane Mitford, prosecuting, said when the two false payments came to light, after examination of the trust’s accounts by a fraud specialist, police went to Mukula's home address to confront him, in January this year.

He immediately confessed, telling the officers: “Yes, I did it.”

Mukula said he invented the invoices on his work computer and faxed them from an adjoining room at the trust’s premises in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, to the main office to make them appear genuine.

He made copies of an authorised signatory on the invoice and used a genuine VAT number, obtained from a receipt from The Body Shop, before leaving the false invoices with the trust’s payment office.

Miss Mitford said Mukula confirmed the payments went into his own account.

Asked why he did it, he said he had “substantial debts”, having obtained £30,000 on credit cards and in loans.

Mukula, 43, who was living in Newcastle at the time, but now of Hannan Road, in Liverpool, today (Friday, October, 26) admitted three charges of fraud.

Jonathan Cousins, mitigating, said Mukula, of previous good character, has already given consent allowing the trust to recover the outstanding money, plus the £7,500 cost of the investigation, from his pension fund.

“He made admissions not just in interview at the police station, but at the point of arrest.

“He spent a considerable amount of time and hard work building his life.

“But this has devastated it, as he’s lost his marriage, his job, his home and the majority of his pension.”

Jailing him for 20 months, Judge Christopher Prince told Mukula it was, “well planned offending”, aggravated by the fact the money was stolen from the National Health Service.