A FORMER heritage railway accounts manager denied taking advantage of the struggling firm’s financial “mess”

to defraud the business.

Corina Heslop is accused of diverting £36,781 from British American Railway Services (Bars) by making eight cheque payments into her own account, each time purporting to be paying company creditors.

Mrs Heslop was management accountant for Bars, which operates the Weardale Railway in County Durham, from October 2008 to February 2010.

Durham Crown Court heard that several weeks after she left the company, an intruder entered its offices at Stanhope Railway Station, in Weardale, over a bank holiday weekend and “sabotaged” its computer system, wiping out records and destroying backup files.

Several days later, Mrs Heslop was arrested and a number of company documents were found at her home in Bishop Auckland.

The court was yesterday given an account of 11 police interviews she gave over the course of the following year before being charged.

She claimed she paid the company cheques to herself as “reimbursement” for items she had bought on behalf of Bars from her own funds.

Asked how she had made these payments without there being a record of them in her own accounts, she said it was from £53,000 she saved from redundancies, shares and other means.

At one stage in the questioning, Detective Constable Dave Rooney put to her: “These cash payments were just not happening. This is nothing to do with any fraud on your part here?”

She denied it and said the company finances were “a mess” at the time.

Det Con Rooney said: “An ideal opportunity for someone dishonest to benefit?”

She replied: “That hasn’t been the case.”

Mrs Heslop said she often took work home with her, accounting for the documents found at her house.

She confirmed she had been in Stanhope on the days the company premises were entered and damaged, and she had seen figures in the vicinity of the offices, but she denied being responsible.

Mrs Heslop, 42, denies eight counts of fraud. She and her 45-year-old husband, Raymond Joseph Heslop, both of Rookhope Grove, deny possessing articles for use in fraud and damaging property.

The trial continues.