A head of compliance in the finance sector who altered emails to give a false impression of the value of his former marital home has been jailed for 30 weeks.

Anthony Cooke was jailed by Deemster Richard Parkes QC, at Douglas Courthouse.

The offence, one of doing an act against public justice, came about as a result of divorce proceedings between the 50-year-old and his wife.

During hearings heard by Deemster John Needham in July 2021, Cooke relied on figures which the court was led to believe were estimates provided by two island-based estate agents.

However, when Cooke’s wife contacted the estate agents and asked for copies of the emails for her own documents, they came back with different estimates to the ones that had been presented to Deemster Needham and the court.

The figures had been altered to a degree of between £5,000 and £10,000.

Prosecutor Roger Kane said that Cooke had done this as he was attempting to buy the house from his wife and by lowering the estimate, it put it into a price range he could afford.

In a written statement to police, Cooke, who lived in Aspden Drive in Peel, admitted he altered the figures to be ‘more realistic’ and said he believed that the lower figures were accurate.

However, Mr Kane said the prosecution said he acted to ‘misled the court’ and had chosen not to tell the court he had changed the figures.

Defence advocate Jim Travers told the court that in his basis of plea, Cooke admitted changing the figure and said he was ‘not thinking rationally’ but did what he did in an attempt to allow his children to continue living in what was previously the family home.

His basis of plea continued to say that the house price would have been determined by market forces so the estimates wouldn’t be accurate anyway.

Mr Travers added that his client accepted what he did was wrong and that he had admitted it at the first opportunity. He said that it was ‘distressing’ for Cooke, who had no previous convictions, to lose his good character and, very likely, his job as head of compliance in the finance sector at Creechurch Capital.

The advocate said that Cooke had been under great stress during his divorce, made worse by the pandemic and the difficulty this led to around access to his children.

Mr Travers said his client had reached a ‘personal nadir’ by the end of 2020.

He added: ‘If the plan was to “get one over on her”, to speak colloquially, it backfired spectacularly.’

Mr Travers also noted that as Cooke hadn’t been successful in his plan, the impact of his crime was less serious and that even if he had succeeded, it would have benefited him to the tune of about £5,000.

He added that his client had worked with probation and that the ‘realisation had dawned that potentially his career in financial services is over’.

Cooke was said to have told probation it was ‘the stupidest thing I have ever done’.

terrible

In sentencing Cooke to 30 weeks in prison, Deemster Parkes said he accepted that he was living through a ‘terrible time’ when he changed the estimates on the house and that this may have impacted his decision-making.

However, he also noted that Cooke had twice entered the estimates as evidence to the court and relied on them. Deemster Needham said that due to his job in compliance, which saw him deal with stressful situations, he was ‘a little sceptical’ that his judgement was impeded over the four months when the offence was committed.

Deemster Parkes said it was ‘immensely sad’ that Cooke had ruined his previous good character, but that he had committed an ‘extremely serious’ offence that ‘strikes at the heart of the administration of justice’.

He said that Cooke had ‘set out to dupe’ lawyers and the courts and that a custodial sentence, despite Mr Travers’ plea for a suspended sentence, was ‘utterly unavoidable’.