Sentence reduced by Court of Appeal

R v NG [2022] EWCA Crim 1095

NG was the Head of Finance at a digital media company with an annual turnover of £20m. He pleaded guilty to fraud by abuse of position having accepted misusing company credit cards to the value of £53,000, but was sentenced on the basis that his offending also caused significant ‘indirect losses’ to the company. 

The Crown claimed that the company’s loss increased to £678,000 due to the cost of their internal investigation and the reconciliation of inaccurate management accounts (which had been prepared by the Appellant) with actual receipts. The Appellant was sentenced to a total of 4years 9 months for fraud and a Bail Act offence.

Stan Reiz QC and Amirah Ajaz of ABV Solicitors were instructed to represent the Appellant before the Court of Appeal. Whilst the court concluded that it was not wrong in principle for a judge to consider “directly consequential additional financial losses when considering harm” for the purposes of the sentencing guideline, the court accepted that the relevant loss from the Appellant’s criminal conduct was well below the £678,000 the Crown had claimed.  The loss caused by the offence could properly be assessed as having been around £100,000.  

The court agreed that the sentencing judge took a starting point which was too high and the appeal therefore had to be allowed. The total sentence was reduced to 3 years 11 months.