Council leader guilty of fraud after £9,000 fake heritage society scam

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Jason Zadrozny, the leader of Ashfield District Council in Nottinghamshire, was convicted of nine counts of fraud and four counts of fraudulent evasion of income tax after a trial at Northampton Crown Court.

He was cleared of three counts of fraud.

Four of the guilty verdicts were reached by a majority of jurors, with 11 of them agreeing, while the rest were unanimously reached.

The 46-year-old, who was first elected to both Ashfield District Council and Nottinghamshire County Council in 2007, did not react in the dock on Monday as jurors returned their verdicts after deliberating for 10 hours and 47 minutes over three days.

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Prosecutors told a four-week trial that the Ashfield Independents group leader was “short of money” and helped himself to cash from the Ashfield Heritage Society, which he set up in February 2018.

Jurors were also told Zadrozny was a landlord who did not pay tax on the income from four of his properties.

Opening the Crown’s case at the beginning of the trial, prosecutor James Varley KC said the Ashfield Heritage Society did not exist.

Mr Varley told the court: “He told the council ‘this is a genuine organisation, they need some funds’ and they gave him some funds but it was a scam.”

Zadrozny nominated himself as a chairman and was the only signatory to the account, which was issued a bank card and a chequebook, but the address put on the application form did not exist, the court heard.

The councillor, of Sutton Road, Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, told the jury he did not keep the money for himself.

But the Crown said funding allocated to the society was withdrawn in cash by the defendant, while a cinema club created by Zadrozny “was probably legitimate when he set it up” although he later helped himself to its funds.

The court heard that £9,100 was withdrawn in cash from the Ashfield Heritage Society account, while £1,200 was withdrawn from the Classic Cinema Club account.

Both organisations were funded by the councillors’ divisional fund of Nottinghamshire County Council, which is meant to be used for good causes.

Three days after setting up the Ashfield Heritage Society account in February 2018, Zadrozny applied for £7,500 of funding for the group, Mr Varley said.

The money was granted and later all withdrawn in cash, the jury was told.

In August 2018, the court heard the defendant asked for a further £1,600 for the society for “funding towards the cost of commemorative events, badges, poppies and road decorations”.

This was also withdrawn in cash and there is no record of what it was spent on, the court heard.

The Classic Cinema Club received £1,200 in November 2018 and all the funds were withdrawn in cash in June of the following year.

Zadrozny, a former member of the Liberal Democrats, stood as a candidate for the party in Ashfield at the 2010 general election, but came second to the Labour candidate by less than 200 votes.

He also stood as an independent candidate in the 2019 and 2024 general elections, and in the 2016 Nottinghamshire police and crime commissioner poll.

Zadrozny told jurors he gave the cash from Ashfield Heritage Society to Tony Brewer, a former Ashfield District Council chairman who died from Covid in 2020, to carry out the repair and maintenance of war memorials in the area.

The defendant told jurors his paperwork for funding applications was “terrible”, adding: “I wouldn’t be sitting in the dock if I filled it out much more clearly.

“As I go back, I’ve gone ‘perhaps I should have been a lot more diligent and paid a lot more attention to them, and then I wouldn’t be here’.”

He also said the wrong address on the application form for the heritage society was “clearly an error” and he cannot remember why he wrote it down.

Judge David Herbert KC, who granted Zadrozny bail until his sentencing hearing on November 27, told him an immediate prison sentence is possible.