A FORMER rail company accounts manager accused of defrauding the firm yesterday claimed she had paid its creditors herself to ease the stress on her colleagues.

Corina Elaine Heslop, who is accused of paying eight cheques totalling £36,781 from British American Railway Services (Bars) – operator of the Weardale Railway, in County Durham – into her own bank account during 2009, told Durham Crown Court she was being reimbursed.

She said: “We had creditors being very abusive and threatening court action.

“It was actually causing Margaret (a Bars colleague) some distress. Her health was deteriorating, as well as my own.

“To ease the pressure off both of us, due to me having the money, I took it on myself to pay these creditors so it would ease the stress we were under.”

However, she was unable to give figures, dates or payees because it was so long ago, she said.

Mrs Heslop, 42, said the money had come from remortgaging a house, inheritance, shares and a Glaxo- SmithKline redundancy payment to her husband, James Raymond Heslop.

She kept up to £80,000 in cash at home ahead of her 2009 wedding, she said.

Earlier, Judge Christopher Prince had instructed the jury to find Mr Heslop, 45, not guilty of a charge of criminal damage.

The couple, both of Rookhope Grove, Bishop Auckland, each deny possessing articles to assist in fraud; and Mrs Heslop denies eight counts of fraud.

The court also heard Mrs Heslop had previous offences of theft, false accounting and benefit fraud.

While working on a supermarket till, she stole £2,000.

The till had been wrongly scanning cheese, worth about 50p, as costing £200. However, instead of deducting £200, she repeatedly deducted £400 and pocketed the difference, the court heard.

Also, between 1999 and 2008, She falsely claimed to be renting a house she co-owned and later owned – a fraud which included forging a tenancy agreement – to wrongly claim £70,000 in benefits.

She would have been entitled to about £40,000, Mrs Heslop told the court.

Mrs Heslop, who is awaiting sentence on the latter case, said she felt “very remorseful”

about these offences.

The trial continues.