NEWS: Platt gets two years for Jaguar fraud

Renny Platt, the former Saatchi and Saatchi joint head of facilities,

has been jailed for two years for his part in a pounds 2.5 million fraud

against the car company, Jaguar.

Platt, 51, was one of three individuals sent to prison for their

involvement in a scam against the car-maker involving massively inflated

invoices and what Scotland Yard’s Company Fraud Squad described this

week as ‘a large and complicated conspiracy’.

Snaresbrook Crown Court had heard how Platt had received pounds 186,000

by overcharging Jaguar and had once picked up the pounds 3,000 bill that

Roger Fielding, a corrupt company executive, ran up at a Savile Row

tailor.

Ordering Platt to pay pounds 5,000 costs, Judge Stephen Robbins

described him as ‘an eager and active participant in this corruption’

and as Fielding’s ‘enthusiastic lieutenant’.

And he told all three men: ‘The message must go out loud and clear that

the courts take a very serious view of corruption. Those involved in it

must expect to go to prison immediately.’

Platt was jailed along with two former senior Jaguar employees -

Fielding, 44, and Ronald Parker, 62, who were sent down for three years

and 18 months respectively. All admitted conspiring to commit corruption

in relation to Jaguar’s business.

Appearing with them was a design company director, Roger Kennedy - no

relation to Saatchis’ current head of typography of the same name - who

was ordered to pay pounds 20,000 costs and complete 200 hours of

community service work.

He was found guilty of false accounting in relation to over-inflated

invoices that he had submitted to Platt, but was cleared of conspiring

to defraud Jaguar.

Fielding, said by the judge to be ‘motivated by financial greed’,

accepted more than pounds 250,000 in bribes for awarding artwork

contracts to Platt’s company, No. 32, a Saatchis subsidiary.

This article was first published on Campaign