"Clerk stole $200,000 from SAS office"

11:17am Tuesday 22nd July 2008

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AN ARMY pay clerk stole 200,000 US dollars from the SAS cash office in Hereford, a court martial has heard.

Staff Sergeant Mark McKay, 35, returned from Iraq in 2003 and made off with the money, it is alleged.

Prosecutor Nadim Bashir told a court martial at Bulford in Wiltshire that the Adjutant General's Corp (AGC) soldier, who at the time was attached to 22 Special Air Service as a finance sergeant, took the money from an SAS cash office.

McKay denies the charge of theft between November 2003 and July 2004.

His alleged dishonesty came to light in April 2006 when military police, acting on intelligence, searched McKay's home in Ballykelly, northern Ireland, where he was posted in July 2004 on to another regiment, the trial heard.

Investigators found newly-printed US dollars, totalling 100,000 dollars, in plastic bags concealed in a terracotta plant pot outside McKay's front door, Mr Bashir said.

The court heard that McKay told police he acquired the cash after filing the accounts following the SAS's return from the Iraq War in 2003 and found there to be 200,000 dollars surplus.

"He said he could not account for it and hid it in a safe," Mr Bashir said.

"Between May and November 2003 he removed the cash. Even when he was transferred out of the regiment, he took the cash with him to his new posting.

"In the two and a half years the cash was in his possession it remained sealed in its original packaging.

"This was an awfully large sum of money - not the sort of cash that could be spent without leaving a trail directly back to him.

"He admitted putting the US dollars in a terracotta plant pot outside his front door about six weeks before it was found because at the time he was about to break up with his wife."

The court was not told what had happened to the other 100,000 dollars.

Mr Bashir said large sums of foreign currency were kept in the SAS offices for troops' use on deployment abroad.

McKay began work as a finance clerk at Sterling Lines in July 2000 before being reassigned to Ballykelly in 2004 to work with Infantry Brigade, the court heard.

McKay was highly regarded by his superiors, said to be "at the top of his trade", the court was told.

Major Gerald Crowe, of the AGC's staff and personnel support branch, McKay's former boss at Hereford, said McKay was a very able finance sergeant who performed his job to a high standard.

He said McKay's job involved accompanying troops on deployment and accounting for all public funds spent, from the purchase of toothbrushes to tens of thousands on contractors.

"I trusted him fully. I had no reason to doubt him whatsoever," he told the court.

The trial continues.