Health chiefs face fraud charges

Trevor Molton was dismissed as WYMAS chief executive in April 2004

Two health chiefs used NHS cash for a "risky venture" recruiting overseas nurses, Manchester Crown Court heard.

Trust chief executive Trevor Molton, 50, of Pickering, North Yorks, and finance director John Miners, 54, of Somerset, deny conspiracy to defraud.

The pair set up the Trust Professionals agency in a bid to ease a shortage of nurses across the service, without a proper business plan, a jury was told.

Molton's wife Angela and Paul Buckley, of Leeds, face the same charges.

'Nurse shortages'

A consultant NHS investigator told the court the men, then executives at West Yorkshire Metropolitan Ambulance Service NHS Trust, embarked on a "speculative venture" to bring nurses in from the Philippines.

Health service director David Young said: "It was novel, it was contentious and it was risky. It was well outside their normal business."

He said the business, which operated as a trading arm of the trust, had apparently been set up without proper planning or appropriate consultation with the trust's board of governors.

"I have seen no evidence of any proper documented business planning whatsoever," he added.

The Crown alleges Filipino nurses brought into the UK were housed by a business set up by Mr Molton and Mr Miners.

Charges denied

The nurses paid rent to the company, Accommodation for Yorkshire, and the profits went to the company and the defendants, it is alleged.

Neither Mr Molton nor Mr Miners told the trust's board of directors about their involvement in Accommodation for Yorkshire despite opportunities to do so, the court heard.

Mr Young said the minutes of trust board meetings from 2000 and 2001 made no reference to the company.

He said NHS guidelines instructed finance directors and chief executives to register their involvement in the company on the trust's register of interests.

He said it was clearly a case where a possible conflict of interest could arise.

All four defendants deny the charges against them. The trial continues.