A Nigerian-born accountant Samuel Kayode, 57, at the centre of a fraud investigation after £4m of a school fund ended up in his personal accounts.
The vast sum of money is missing from the Haberdashers’ Aske’s Federation Trust in South London.
The school is named after 17th century silk merchant Robert Aske who left much of his wealth to create an educational charity fund run by the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers.
The Haberdashers’ Aske’s public schools for boys and girls in Hertfordshire was founded with his money.
Kayode went to work at Hatcham in 1997 and rose to become accounts manager for the whole chain.
He was paid £57,000 a year, and told colleagues of his work as a pastor in the Christ Apostolic Church, South London, peppering his conversations with ‘praise the Lord’.
In October 2012 it emerged that a large sum of money was missing from the academies’ funds.
Kayode’s assets and those of his wife Grace, who died aged 53 last year, were then frozen.
It appeared that huge sums of school money had been paid into a bank account in Nigeria and a company called Samak, which is said to be run in Nigeria by Kayode’s second wife Yoni, although he denies any wedding has taken place.
The trust launched a High Court case to reclaim the missing cash but the accountant denied wrongdoing and claimed ‘all transactions had been authorised by the finance director’.
However, the judge found in the trust’s favour last July and ordered Kayode and the estate of his late wife to pay back more than £4million plus interest.
He remains at large and is not facing any charges, although he is due to speak to detectives again this week.
Isaac Nobenz
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