Fleetcare depots in overcharging row
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• Leicester Crown Court was told last week that Fleetcare — the National Freight Consortium subsidiary — overcharged one of its major clients, British Railways, by 'several million pounds'.
The court heard how Fleetcare's depot managers were instructed to send customers inflated invoices by the then operations manger at a special meeting at Kings Cross in 1982.
Anthony Hacking QC, prosecuting, said: "The reason for this was that Fleetcare was running at a loss. It is the view of the British Transport Police that overall losses for British Rail amount to several million pounds."
One of the depot managers, David Harold Martin, 43, of Watergall, Bretton, Peterborough, who was then manager of Fleetcare's Leicester depot at Constitution Hill, pleaded guilty to nine specimen charges of falsifying accounts and job cards up to a value of under £500.
Gerard Elias, QC, for Martin said there were substantial deficits within Fleetcare in 1982, and it was made clear to Martin that the future of the Leicester depot was in jeopardy.
Martin was given two years conditional discharge on each of the nine charges.
The court case in Leicester follows a British Transport Police operation in 1984, when documents were seized from 20 Fleetcare depots. Evidence was found of overcharging at each location.
A spokesman for the British Transport Police says the results of that operation are still under investigation, but he was not prepared to say whether any further prosecutions are likely to take place.
Fleetcare told CM that "the charges were brought against individuals and not Fleetcare as a whole. No corporate instructions were made to overcharge clients, though this was chimed in court by defence counsel."