Secrets behind couple's life of luxury

Arthur Mills reports on Paul and Sarah Kent, the Golden couple who seemed to have it all.

The lavish wedding of Paul and Sarah Kent was held at an elegant 16-bedroom Palladian-style villa set in four acres of landscaped grounds.

Impressive Tone Dale House near Wellington, in the heart of Somerset, offered sumptuous surroundings, where the 40 guests drank champagne, enjoyed hot tubs and could engage in quad biking, archery and shooting.

Few of the guests at the 200-year-old party venue five years ago were aware that Paul Kent had settled the £28,000 bill from the proceeds of a series of "bungs" he had received while employed by the Learning & Skills Council.

See also: Men jailed over corrupt payments

Kent's best man, Silinder Singh Sidhu, who was among those paying the bridegroom backhanders, was in on the secret.

The other person with inside knowledge was an unidentified whistleblower who had alerted LSC bosses to the corruption the day before the Kents' wedding on July 9, 2005.

Blissfully unaware that their world was about to crash down around them the Kents happily posed for photographs for a stylish album produced by top society photographer Julia Tibbs costing around £2,000.

The newlyweds also took great delight in showing off their expensive wedding gifts – a Rolex watch each and a £27,000 Audi TT convertible for the bride, complete with the personalised registration SAK 800 and tied with a red ribbon.

Honeymoon

Money from Paul Kent's £270,000 haul of corrupt payments was also splashed out on an £11,000 exotic honeymoon – a 5-star balcony cabin on board an Oriental cruise liner to Thailand, Singapore and the Maldives.

Meanwhile, back at the Telford offices of the Shropshire Learning & Skills Council, an internal inquiry was launched.

When the couple arrived back from the Far East and returned to work they were immediately suspended and Kent resigned his post in September 2005.

A short time later the Serious Fraud Office and West Mercia police were called in to investigate allegations of corruption.

The Kents shared a £300,000 house in Muxton bought when the couple's official joint income was in region of £60,000. But the mortgage application showed Kent's salary to be £100,000 and his bride-to-be earning £40,000.

Architect's plans for an extension and pool and gym at the property costing up to £100,000 were also discovered.

Both were divorcees when they married, but Kent was still with his first wife when the couple first met as work colleagues at the LSC offices in Telford in 2003.

Sarah Emberton, as she was then, had worked for the Learning & Skills Council at its offices in Central Park, Telford, for some years and in June 2003 Kent was appointed as adult learning strategy manager.

He had obtained the job by creating a fake CV about his previous employment, although he had been at Sutton Coldfield College as in-house IT expert and business manager at Kidderminster College.

Various versions of his CV were found at his home.

Emberton was a £25,000-a-year internal funding manager at the LSC and Kent was her line manager and both were involved in the evaluation and scoring of tenders for training contracts and deciding who got the work, often worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Dishonest

During recent court proceedings prosecuting counsel Martin Meeke QC said that Paul Kent was dishonest from the start. "He was taking "bungs", "backhanders" or "kickbacks" which are the current phrases for corrupt payments," he said. "Everything he touched was dishonest.

"He was as bent as they come," said Mr Meeke.

He said Kent was at the hub of the corruption and that he and Silinder Singh Sidhu had been working "hand in glove".

Within months of his appointment Kent was targeting 45-year-old Rebecca Hoyle who ran a design and print business, Design Barn, from her home in Cheltenham.

They had known each other at primary school in Hertfordshire and just prior to Kent's move to the LSC had been re-acquainted through the Friends Reunited website.

Hoyle said that Kent offered her work, but was seeking a £6,250 payment which he told her he needed to recover from his recent divorce.

Kent produced fake invoices for "marketing work" at £750 a day to cover the additional money paid on the Learning & Skills Council contract.

There were two more payments for contracts from Hoyle – one for £13,000 and another for £10,000 during 2004. Hoyle said that it was made clear that if she did not inflate the tenders she would not get the contracts.

In September 2003 Silinder Singh Sidhu was employed in a marketing role with a £23,000 salary, but resigned just six weeks later.

Kent and Sidhu were immediate friends and Kent was able to convince the LSC bosses to retain Sidhu as an external contractor and Sidhu was soon being awarded LSC contracts. A year later he was paying backhanders totalling almost £35,000 to Kent.

Deposits

By the end of 2004 Kent had been appointed director of adult learning with a £47,000 salary. He sent Sidhu an e-mail saying "I got the director's job. Let's see if we can make more money".

The pair also exchanged e-mails about placing deposits for them to each buy new Audi cars.

In March 2005, Sidhu's company SLK Marketing Ltd was awarded a £115,000 contract for which Kent had "written" the tender based on an application to the LSC from a rival marketing firm.

Kent later received a £45,800 kickback.

Payments and false invoices went through Saul Enterprises, of which Kent and Sarah Emberton were directors, which was set up in 2004 while both were employed by the LSC.

Shrewsbury-based education and training provider John Ford was a vulnerable target and was exploited by Kent. Ford had failed to get any work with the LSC, but was told by Kent that he could "fix it" for him.

Between January and May 2005 Ford's two skills and training operations were awarded contracts worth £920,000 – for which he paid Kent around £190,000 in backhanders.

The corruption was detected in July 2005, when a whistleblower spoke out during the allocation of monies from the European Social Fund.

It was suggested there was little point in discussing who should get the contracts because "they would go to Paul Kent's friends anyway".