IT supplier jailed for paying £80,000 in kickbacks
NHS executive took bribes in exchange for £950,000 A&E software deal
An IT supplier has been jailed for 14 months for agreeing to pay £81,000 in back-handers to a corrupt NHS official.
Cheshire-based Richard Moxon paid the inducements to win a software deal with Royal Surrey County Hospital's A&E department, worth £950,000 in the first year.
Moxon and Peter Lewis (pictured below, with Moxon on the right), who was employed by the Royal Surrey County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust as director of infomatics, were sentenced at Guildford Crown Court on Friday.
He was handed a 14-month sentence while Lewis was sent down for three and a half years. Both were banned from being company directors for 10 years.
Moxon is listed on Companies House as having been a director at eight firms: Swan Personnel; Roar Healthcare; Roar Technology; Roar Investments; Hatherton Healthcare Services; Five Eight Partners; Orbit Applications; and Oasis Medical Solutions.
Between January and December 2011, Moxon paid Lewis a total of £73,770 over nine instalments, as well as a further payment of £7,200 to a stables to which Lewis was a debtor.
Detective Superintendent Karen Mizzi, head of proactive crime for Surrey Police, said: "Peter Lewis sought to greedily divert money from the NHS into his own pockets. While I am glad to see justice being served through his custodial sentence, my team is now focusing on recovering the money Lewis made from his crime, and returning it to the NHS.
"I hope Richard Moxon's sentence will act as a warning to other public sector suppliers, who may be tempted to go along with a fraud rather than reporting an approach to the relevant authorities at the earliest opportunity."
The fraud came to light in December 2011 when the Trust conducted a disciplinary probe into Lewis' relationship with a recruitment firm that also supplied the hospital.
An investigation found that 40 per cent of the ICT product supplied by Moxon did not meet the needs of the Trust. The Trust was able to recoup some of the lost money by incorporating Moxon's software into a new system, but still lost £433,000 on the project, with the direct fraud against it standing at £81,000.