The greedy disgraced grandson of a philanthropic Lord, who milked over £1.6m from a charity established by the generous artistocrat, blew the cash on a doomed spark plug invention plus posh wines, exclusive clubs and private schools.
Eton-educated The Honourable Jonathan Davies, 64, pleaded guilty to ten sample counts of stealing £232,000 between 1999 and 2000 from Dinam – a charity founded by his grandfather Lord David Davies in 1926.
Davies – the charity’s general secretary – also squandered funds on golf club membership, settling debts and lavishing gifts on family.
Investment banker Davies, of Ramsden Road, Wandsworth, only confessed to his crimes after his trial started at Southwark Crown Court and he will return for sentencing on a date to be fixed.
He handed £1.5million to an inventor developing a new type of spark plug and the losses of the Wales-based charity – involved in healthcare and international relations - are so damaging it faces closure.
Although the charges reflect dishonesty during his last year at the helm of the charity, inquiries revealed the father-of-six had actually taken a total of £1,656,143.
When the fraud came to light, he told “horrified” relatives a seven-figure fortune had been ploughed into the spark plug venture.
A detailed trawl through various documents, as well as his chequebooks, revealed he had also tried to cover up extensive personal expenditure.
Prosecutor Stephen Leslie QC said: “Many of us dream of having a bottomless piggy bank full of money that we can dip into whenever we need to solve our financial troubles – a tax demand, unpaid credit card debt, repairs to our car or an overdue bill.
“For most of us it remains just that, a dream. When we wake up, we realise that life doesn’t work like that and instead of dipping into the magical piggy bank, we have to go out and earn the money to pay for the bills we incur and the things we buy.
“Not so, however, for Jonathan Davies, he did not need to dream about a piggy bank, he had access to one.
But in order to use it he had to practice a fraud and the fraud he practiced was not on a faceless corporation like a bank or an insurance company or the Government, but on members of his own family.”
“He abused his position of authority and trust and turned the funds of the charity to his own uses,” added the QC.
“When his own financial means became stretched, he simply wrote a cheque to himself from the charity’s bank account, thereby solving the problem immediately.”
Davies became involved with the charity in the Sixties before being appointed secretary in 1992.
Apart from preparing the charity’s financial reports and liaising with accountants, he was in possession of the body’s chequebook.
At the Dinam AGM on February 24, 2000 trustees reacted with horror after learning over £1 million had been ploughed into the spark plug scheme.
A total of 120 cheque stubs were examined and revealed “considerable discrepancies” designed to conceal the truth, the court heard.
Outside court, Detective Sergeant Ward, of the Met’s Private Sector Fraud Team, said: “It is really sad that the greed of Jonathan Davies has meant that a fund set up by his grandfather in order to invest millions so that charitable causes could benefit from the profits now faces closure.
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