Council leader found guilty of fraud and tax evasion
- Details
Ashfield District Council leader Jason Zadrozny has been found guilty of nine counts of fraud by collecting funds for a non-existent local amenity group.
He was also convicted of tax evasion.
Judge David Herbert KC, sitting at Northampton Crown Court, adjourned sentencing but warned Cllr Zadrozny he was at risk of a custodial term. Cllr Zadrozny had denied the offences.
A statement from the Crown Prosecution Service said Cllr Zadrozny applied for grants using Ashfield’s councillors’ discretionary fund, a small budget allocated to councillors to support community organisations.
He sought funds to benefit the Ashfield Heritage Society, with a stated purpose of looking after war memorials. and persuaded other councillors from his Ashfield Independents party to allocate their budgets to this organisation.
It said he then applied for a further grant for Ashfield Heritage Society in 2021, and for a group calling itself the Classic Cinema Club.
“In total he dishonestly secured £6,200 from the local authority,” the CPS said.
CPS investigations into the funding showed no evidence that the Ashfield Heritage Society had ever existed, but that the funds for it had been had withdrawn when the sole account holder was Cllr Zadrozny, who used a fictitious address for this purpose.
A police investigation concluded Zadrozny had applied for the funding dishonestly. He was arrested and prosecutors from the CPS East Midlands Complex Casework Unit charged him with 12 counts of fraud by false representation.
Later investigations revealed Cllr Zadrozny had knowingly evaded income tax on rental income on four properties and he was prosecuted for four counts of fraudulent evasion of income tax.
CPS officer Janine McKinney said: “Jason Zadrozny was placed in a position of trust by the people he claimed to represent. He used his role to get his hands on taxpayers’ money to which he was not entitled.
“Zadrozny used his knowledge of the system, to target sources of funding that relied on trust and discretion to use for himself. His web of lies, greed and manipulation has unravelled in the face of the evidence.”
Explaining how it built the case, the CPS said Cllr Zadrozny’s fraudulent activities were first suspected when an election candidate was researching community expenditure and noticed the grants to the Ashfield Heritage Society, which she could not recall ever carrying out any activities.
She queried this with the council, which ultimately passed the matter on to the police.
Cllr Zadrozny sought to deflect the investigation onto someone who had died during the pandemic.
Investigations into Cllr Zadrozny’s finances uncovered payments relating to a house purchase that matched the timing and the amount of the first fraudulent claim.
The CPS said within a month of the grant to the Ashfield Heritage Society, Cllr Zadrozny made two withdrawals totalling £5,000 from its account, and within 14 minutes the same amount was deposited in cash into the account of an associate with whom he was making a house purchase.
Withdrawals from the Classic Cinema Club account coincided with his own accounts going overdrawn.
An Ashfield statement said: “We are aware of the reports that Councillor Jason Zadrozny is stepping down as leader of the council and as a member of the Ashfield Independent Group.
“The council is looking at governance options that would elect a new leader as soon as possible.
“We will confirm details once those arrangements are in place. In the meantime, all Council services will continue uninterrupted.”
Cllr Zadrozny was originally a Liberal Democrat but later formed the Ashfield Independents, which holds 30 of the council’s 35 seats.
Mark Smulian
