‘Crook’ who stole £27k from charity spared jail
Additional Info: Howard Davies was clerk and RFO for Llangunnor Community Council between March 2021 and March 2024
The trusted treasurer of a charity spent years stealing money from the organisation and fiddling the books to cover his tracks, a court has heard.
Howard Davies was in charge of the finances of an agricultural society responsible for staging a popular annual farming show when he helped himself to more than £27,000 from its funds, including money which was supposed be donated to a cancer charity.
Swansea Crown Court heard the defendant’s dishonesty put the future of the 70-year-old society’s agricultural show at risk and has caused “considerable emotional distress”.
Emily Bennett, prosecuting, told the court that Davies was appointed treasurer of the Llanddarog and District Agricultural Society in Carmarthenshire in 2010 shortly after joining the organisation.
She said the defendant was responsible for managing the society’s funds, taking care of outgoings, auditing accounts and presenting financial reports to the committee.
The barrister said the offending came to light in 2023 when society members requested details of audits and financial documents, and obtained statements from the charity’s bank which showed significant discrepancies. Among the issues was a cheque for £2,000 which was supposedly paid to Prostate Cancer UK but which the charity never received.
The matter was reported to the police in January 2024 and the defendant was arrested in March. His phone and laptops were seized, along with financial documents.
The court heard that a subsequent financial investigation found that some £23,088 in society cheques had either been made payable to cash or their stubs had been left blank in chequebooks, while £4,460 in cash collected over the years had not been paid into its account.
The prosecutor said a total of £27,052 was taken by the defendant between 2018 and 2024 but it had not been possible to examine the financial records prior to that period.
Davies told police he had fallen into financial difficulties due to a house build and had “borrowed” money – he estimated around £30,000 – from the society, some of which he said he had paid back.
He told officers he had kept a record of all the money he had borrowed in a notebook. The defendant also admitted to presenting fake bank statements to committee members during annual general meetings and to not getting the accounts audited.
In a statement read to the court, society officer Nia Thomas said the theft had caused “considerable emotional stress” to members, and she had personally been left with a “deep sense of anger and shame”.
She said Davies’ crimes had undermined the work of decades and of generations of supporters, and said the “loss of trust will be felt for many years to come”. She added that the financial impact of the offending “cannot be overestimated” and might yet bring an end to the society’s annual agricultural show.
Davies, of Carmarthen, had previously pleaded guilty to fraud by abuse of position when he appeared in the dock for sentencing.
Sol Hartley, for Davies, said the defendant was in a position to immediately repay the money and had a cheque – and a letter of apology – with him in the dock. The cheque was then handed over.
Judge Paul Thomas told Davies that for a period of some 14 years he had been trusted by the society to look after its finances, as he had been perceived as a respectable and honest person, but “that was a sham, you were neither of those things – you were a crook”. He said Davies was now a “pariah in the community and deservedly so”, and said he suspected “that will be the greatest punishment”.
With a one-third discount for his guilty plea, Davies was sentenced to 22 months in prison suspended for two years and was ordered to complete 250 hours of unpaid work in the community
Source - The Western Mail January 17, 2026.
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