A Nigerian-born part-time pastor and accountant at a chain of academies is at the centre of a
fraud investigation after £4million of school funds ended up in his
personal accounts.
Samuel Kayode, pictured above, is said to have spent much of the cash on
an extravagant lifestyle and buying a string of properties.DailyMail in
a fresh report yesterday says the 57-year-old part-time pastor was told
by the High Court to pay £4.1million back more than a year ago. He has
failed to do so, and it is feared most of the cash has been transferred
to Nigeria. The case, kept secret for almost two years, is believed to
be Britain’s biggest ever education fraud.
The vast sum of money is missing from the Haberdashers’ Aske’s Federation Trust in South London. Although Kayode was arrested in October 2012, police have yet to charge him with any crime.
Kayode went to work at the college in 1997 and rose to become accounts
manager for the whole chain. He was paid £57,000 (N14.2million) a year,
and told colleagues of his work as a pastor in the Christ Apostolic
Church, South London, peppering his conversations with ‘praise the
Lord’. In October 2012 it emerged that a large sum of money was missing
from the academies’ funds
. Kayode’s assets and those of his wife Grace, who died aged 53 last year, were then frozen.
It appeared that huge sums of school money had been paid into a bank account
in Nigeria and a company called Samak, which is said to be run in
Nigeria by Kayode’s second wife Yoni, although he denies any wedding has
taken place.
The trust launched a High Court case to reclaim the missing cash but the accountant denied wrongdoing and claimed ‘all transactions had been authorised by the finance director’.
However, the judge found in the trust’s favour last July and ordered
Kayode and the estate of his late wife to pay back more than £4million
plus interest. He remains at large and is not facing any charges,
although he is due to speak to detectives again this week.
A Metropolitan Police spokesman would say only that a man from Lambeth was on police bail.
Adrian
Percival, chief executive of Haberdashers’ Aske’s Federation Trust,
said: ‘The civil case found in favour of the federation and we are
trying to recover the money that has been taken from us. We are
obviously shocked and saddened.’
But furious parents say Haberdashers’ Aske’s has tried to hush the scandal up.
Jill
Rutter, who has several children at the Hatcham academy, said in an
online blog: ‘The fraud strikes at the heart of the educational
establishment and shows that the current system and the freedom afforded
to academies is not working. Ultimately it is our children that
suffer.’
Kayode’s boss at Haberdashers’ Aske’s, former chief finance officer Paul Durgan, is now working for a new academies chain.
He said: ‘Sam Kayode completely had me taken, like everybody else. Nobody from the police or school has spoken to me.’
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