Worker helped fleece Sainsbury’s in £9m scandal

A corrupt Shropshire company director was today beginning a two-and-a-half year jail sentence for helping to fleece store giant Sainsbury’s out of £9 million in a bribes scandal so he could lead a lavish lifestyle.

Married father-of-two David Baxter, of Chester Road, Hinstock, near Market Drayton, was jailed yesterday after admitting corruption and acquiring criminal property.

At Croydon Crown Court, Judge Nicholas Ainley said he believed Baxter, 50, pocketed about £100,000 from the scam.

He said Baxter, an ex-director at potato supplier Greenvale in Stoke Heath, was provided with a credit card to draw money from a secret fund and ‘took the opportunity to lead the life of a rich man at somebody else’s expense’.

He told Baxter: “You knew perfectly well you were stealing money from Sainsbury’s to live as extravagantly as you did.” The court heard Baxter and former Greenvale finance director Andrew Behagg showered Sainsbury’s potato buyer John Maylam with gifts and hospitality in return for lucrative contracts with the supermarket.

A four-year police probe revealed £4.9m was paid to Maylam out of a fund which had been created by overcharging Sainsbury’s.

Maylam, 45, of Bearsted, Kent, who admitted corruption and acquiring criminal property, was jailed for four years and Behagg, 60, from Chatteris, Cambridgeshire, who was found guilty after a trial of corruption by authorising payments to Maylam, was jailed for three years.

Mr Robert Benzynie, for Baxter, said his client drank to such an extent that he was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver, which acted as his ‘wake-up call’.