Vic: Jail for accountant in $3m fraud case

AAP General News (Australia)
04-11-2005
Vic: Jail for accountant in $3m fraud case

MELBOURNE, April 11, AAP - Accountant Robert Andrew Kirsopp was a privileged man who
could have had anything.

But blind ambition became the undoing of the 40-year-old Melbourne Scotch College old
boy and former champion athlete, County Court judge Michael Strong said today as he jailed
Kirsopp for more than four years on fraud charges.

Kirsopp, who pleaded guilty to a total of 39 charges, had claimed at a previous hearing
that stupidity and desperation to rescue his failing businesses led him to hoodwink clients
who trusted him.

Among his victims was the high-profile racehorse trainer Lee Freedman.

The charges included 13 of deception over the the theft and forgery of 221 cheques
to the value of $3.19 million over five years to November 2002.

The father of three was the bookkeeper for the operators of Barrie and Margaret Griffiths,
the owners of a Victorian thoroughbred stud, when he used 215 stolen and forged cheques
to divert $3.14 million to his own bank accounts.

While working for the Freedman brothers, Lee, Richard, Anthony and Michael he stole
six cheques worth $55,500.

Kirsopp, a former professional sprinter who came second in the 1984 Stawell Gift, was
assisting the brothers' full-time bookkeeper at the time and had access to their chequebook.

Kirsopp told police he stole the money out of "stupidity and desperation to keep businesses
afloat".

These interests included three restaurants and several racehorses.

He also pleaded guilty to defrauding the commonwealth, 16 charges of obtaining a financial
advantage by deception and nine of attempting to obtain a financial advantage by deception
by lodging false business activity statements with the Australian Taxation Office.

Judge Strong sentenced Kirsopp to a maximum of seven-and-a-half years and fixed a minimum
term of four years and four months.

The Judge said Kirsopp came from a privileged background and would once have been described
"as the man who had everything".

The judge said that greed might have driven Kirsopp to "this very grave and persistent
offending".

However, there was no evidence of high living.

"The answer may be that you had a blind determination to succeed and to be seen to
succeed," said judge Strong.

"For you, mediocrity in any form was unacceptable," the judge added.

"As one disaster followed the next, you just kept going hoping for a miracle."

Kirsopp entered a downward spiral to "inevitable detection, ruin, disgrace and prison,"

said the judge.

AAP sew/jt/bwl

KEYWORD: KIRSOPP NIGHTLEAD

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