Jail for lawyer who stole £6m to keep friend's airline flying

Published on Friday 5 February 2010 20:59

A HIGH-FLYING lawyer who conned millions from her bank bosses to help a friend's ailing airline has been jailed for five years.

Kate Johns, 39, deputy head of Tokyo Mitsubishi's legal department, bullied colleagues into ignoring procedure and approving letters of credit totalling more than 6 million.

Sentencing her at London's Southwark Crown Court yesterday, judge John Price said: "The essence of the fraud was that you used your position to persuade, cajole and, I'm afraid, bully those lower down the chain of command to authorise the loan."

The massive transfers ended up in the coffers of struggling Indonesian carrier Air Efata, which boasted just three planes.

In return, the 150,000-a-year lawyer from Camden Town, London, received pay-offs totalling 1.95m, more than 1.1m of which was used to clear the mortgage on her luxury townhouse.

She also splashed out 40,000 on earrings to go with the 35,000 ring grateful airline chief Frank Taira-Supit had bought her.

But she failed to rescue the airline, which was grounded. Mr Taira-Supit, a 58-year-old former lawyer and Harvard graduate, later hanged himself.