FORMER Charity chief Richard Green stole two-and-a-half thousand pounds raised for the Air Ambulance, a court heard.Green, 49, of Strickland Manor Hill, Yoxford, was once the Suffolk co-ordinator of fund raising for the East Anglian Air Ambulance.

FORMER Charity chief Richard Green stole two-and-a-half thousand pounds raised for the Air Ambulance, a court heard.

Green, 49, of Strickland Manor Hill, Yoxford, was once the Suffolk co-ordinator of fund raising for the East Anglian Air Ambulance.

But he was arrested in September 2001 after an investigation was mounted into alleged missing funds from three charity events earlier that year.

Green denies one charge of theft and three further charges of false accounting.

Charles Kellett, prosecuting at Ipswich Crown Court, told the court a garden open day in Yoxford, a fun day in Hinderclay and a donation by Wrentham Parish Council, totalled about two-and-a-half thousand pounds.

He said the cheques had been banked but there was no evidence of them ever being lodged in the Air Ambulances' charity account.

And he alleged Green used money collected in cash from smaller scale charity events in a bid to cover his tracks.

Mr Kellett said the charity's rules required the co-ordinators from Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to fill in a weekly report of events and money raised.

He directed jurors to study reports made out by Green at the end of July and the start of August 2001 and said there was no evidence of any of the events.

It was from these records that the charges of false accounting arose, Mr Kellett told the court.

The trial continues.