A WIRRAL company manager who received more than £2,000 in backhanders has been convicted of corruption.

A Liverpool Crown Court jury took just 25 minutes last Friday to find Shaun Fitzgerald guilty of eight corruption offences.

The judge, Recorder Michael Fish, Q.C., told 50-year-old Fitzgerald that he had lied all through the trial and ought to go to prison.

However, he felt it more appropriate to hit Fitzgerald, whom he described as 'greedy', where it hurt and fined him £3,200 plus £1,500 costs.

During his trial, Mr Robert Atherton, prosecuting said that Fitzgerald had been purchasing manager for Premier Brands in Moreton.

He negotiated a contract with Gale & Mount Ltd., of Eccles, for the supply of the emulsifier sodium stearyl lactate but, unknown to his bosses, received regular payments of £298.50 for each tonne between March and November 1995.

This cash was paid into a bank account held in the names of Fitzgerald and his wife, trading as Wirral Packaging Company.

The matters came to light after the man at Gale and Mount with whom the backhanders had been arranged left and his bosses discovered the payments.

Fitzgerald, of Sudworthy Road, Wallasey, who had been with Premier Brands for 25 years, denied the allegations.

He told the court that he had not known anything about payments and was not involved with the Wirral Packaging account. He is now a self-employed bookseller.

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