Council leader guilty of fraud and tax evasion after fake heritage society scam

A council leader who created a fake heritage society to scam a local authority out of more than £9,000 has been convicted of fraud.

Jason Zadrozny, leader of Ashfield District Council in Nottinghamshire, was found guilty of nine counts of fraud and four counts of fraudulent evasion of income tax at Northampton Crown Court.

Jurors cleared him of three fraud counts.

Four guilty verdicts were reached by a majority of 11 jurors, with the remainder decided unanimously.

The 46-year-old, first elected to both Ashfield District Council and Nottinghamshire County Council in 2007, showed no emotion in the dock on Monday as verdicts were returned after 10 hours and 47 minutes of deliberation over three days.

Prosecutors told the four-week trial that the Ashfield Independents group leader was "short of money" and took cash from the Ashfield Heritage Society, which he established in February 2018.

Jurors were informed that Zadrozny was also a landlord who failed to pay income tax on four rental properties.

Opening the prosecution case, prosecutor James Varley KC stated that 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 appointed himself chairman and was the sole signatory for the account, which received a debit card and chequebook, despite applying with a non-existent address.

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

But the Crown said society funding was withdrawn in cash by the defendant, while a cinema club Zadrozny set up "was probably legitimate when he set it up" before he helped himself to its funds.

Overall, £9,100 was withdrawn in cash from the Ashfield Heritage Society account and £1,200 from the Classic Cinema Club account. Both were funded by Nottinghamshire County Council’s divisional fund for good causes.

Three days after creating the heritage society account in February 2018, Zadrozny applied for £7,500 in funding, Mr Varley said.

The grant was approved and subsequently withdrawn entirely in cash.

In August 2018, the court heard he sought a further £1,600 for "funding towards the cost of commemorative events, badges, poppies and road decorations". This was also taken out in cash, with no record of its expenditure.

The Classic Cinema Club received £1,200 in November 2018, with all funds withdrawn in cash by June 2019.

Zadrozny, a former Liberal Democrat, stood for the party in Ashfield at the 2010 general election, finishing second to Labour by under 200 votes.

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

Zadrozny claimed he gave the heritage society cash to Tony Brewer, a former Ashfield District Council chairman who died from Covid in 2020, for local war memorial repairs.

Admitting his application paperwork was "terrible", he told jurors: "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 added that the wrong address was "clearly an error" he could not explain.

Granting bail until sentencing on November 27, Judge David Herbert KC warned that an immediate prison sentence is possible.