Officer gets six months jail for swindling the navy

London: A royal Navy commander has been jailed for six months for swindling £53,000 (Dh319,103) of taxpayers' money to send his children to an exclusive boarding school.

Commander Anthony Gray, 49, was told "the clang of the prison door" would be the punishment for his crime. The disgraced senior officer was also dismissed from the Navy and ordered to repay the stolen money, which totalled £52,999.40.

Gray, a nuclear submarine expert, was found guilty of nine counts of fraud during a three-day court martial last month.

He dishonestly pocketed a special Armed Forces perk to enable his children Christopher and Margot, then 15 and 11, to attend £5,833-a-term Kingswood School in Bath, Somerset.

He failed to tell the authorities that he had separated from his wife of 20 years and so was no longer eligible to claim the Continuity of Education Allowance. Sentencing him at the military court yesterday, Judge Advocate Alistair McGrigor said: "This was a gross breach of trust against the Royal Navy such as you cannot remain as an officer in the Royal Navy and you should therefore be dismissed.

"We understand the devastating consequences on you and your family. The clang of the prison door will be your greatest punishment."

However Gray, of Newbury, Berkshire, will still be entitled to an annual £32,000 pension and a lump sum of £96,000 on leaving the Navy. CEA is intended to keep children from military families in steady education if their parents are posted to different places around Britain or overseas.

Not ‘prime' carer

To qualify for the grant — covering 90 per cent of a school's fees — an officer must be the ‘prime' carer of their children.

But Gray, who was based at the Defence Equipment and Support organisation at Abbey Wood, Bristol, continued to claim the money between July 2008 and March 2010, even though he had split from his wife Laure and moved in with a new partner.

Judge McGrigor explained that they viewed Gray's claims to have been made fraudulently when he started paying child support allowance.

The naval officer was rumbled in April 2010.