A FINANCE expert used creative bookkeeping to swindle the two firms he worked for out of more than £700,000, a court heard.

Andrew Richards created a complicated paper trail to cover his tracks as he paid his companies' money into his bank accounts.

The 46-year-old used the cash to pay off a mortgage, buy flash cars, go on holiday and purchase jewellery and gifts for others.

Richards, from Guisborough, east Cleveland, was jailed for three years after admitting a string of theft and false accounting charges.

A judge at Teesside Crown Court today (Wednesday, April 17) told the divorced dad that he was guilty of a gross breach of trust with his employers.

Graham Brown, mitigating, said Richards would not have committed the crimes had he not been suffering from clinical depression.

Mr Brown described the condition as "the black dog" and told the judge: "The defendant would say he can't explain the trigger.

"I can't justify it in terms of there being an explanation which is readily available , but we say ill-health has pernicious, variable and indescribable, at times, consequences for those who suffer from it.

"The defence say he would not have committed these offences were it not for depression. His conduct was so outside what it had been for the first 40 years of his life.

"When you effectively go 40 years and then embark upon the course of conduct which has impacted upon so many, one needs to look either for a reason or assume this was wanton hedonism."

Mr Brown said Richards did not spend any of the money he stole for the first three years, and added: "It was simply built up in the account for no purpose, for no reason.

"The holidays they were taking were purely family holidays. These were not hiring some plutocrat's yacht."

Prosecutor Rachel Masters told the court that Richards bought an Audi A5 cabriolet, a Mercedes and a Peugeot 207 Sport during the period of the thefts - between 2005 and last year.

He initially worked as an accountant for Stockton-based Lift Able UK until it was bought out by global company ThyssenKrupp and his role was changed to senior management accountant.

Following an industrial tribunal, Richards left and was recruited by Python Properties, in Middlesbrough, a company concerned with the regeneration of offices.

As consultant director of finance, he had "absolute trust", said Miss Masters, and knew the firm was struggling last year and having to reduce employees' working hours.

In total, Richards stole more than £530,000 from the first organisation he worked for, and almost £180,000 from the property developers.

Judge Simon Bourne-Arton, QC, told him: "For most of your life, you have been a hard-working, intelligent, law-abiding citizen.

"Something must have triggered that offending - either greed or some other reason. I am not persuaded it was entirely a matter of greed.

"I am quite satisfied from all that I have read about you and from what I have heard from Mr Brown that you were a man, at that time, suffering from considerable depression."

Richards, of Kilkenny Road, Guisborough, was also banned from being a company director for the next ten years.