AN ACCOUNTANT who fled abroad and started a new life in Morocco after stealing £20,000 from his employers has been jailed for 18 months. Michael Mill was employed to look after the accounts of a company called Clean Sweep UK Ltd and his job involved paying staff wages and paying the company's tax bill, Ipswich Crown Court heard.

AN ACCOUNTANT who fled abroad and started a new life in Morocco after stealing £20,000 from his employers has been jailed for 18 months.

Michael Mill was employed to look after the accounts of a company called Clean Sweep UK Ltd and his job involved paying staff wages and paying the company's tax bill, Ipswich Crown Court heard.

Mill was entrusted with blank cheques signed by the owners of the business and they assumed the Inland Revenue was being paid, said Michael Crimp, prosecuting.

However, in June 2004, the owners of the company became suspicious about Mill and discovered that instead of paying the Inland Revenue, he had made out company cheques to the value of £20,877 to himself and paid them into his bank account.

Mill, 61, formerly of Lawshall, admitted 11 offences of theft between February 2003 and March 2004.

Jailing him for 18 months, Judge John Holt said the reason the offences had taken so long to come to court, was that Mill had left the country and embarked on a new life in Morocco.

Mr Crimp said that Mill had been arrested in August last year when he returned to the UK and had been in custody since then.

Neil Macaulay, for Mill, said his client had a history of depression and he had been an alcoholic and a gambler.