Navy rating cleared of £13,000 boarding school expenses fraud (From Daily Echo)

Navy rating cleared of £13,000 boarding school expenses fraud

3:55pm Thursday 14th March 2013 in News

A Royal Navy senior rating from Hampshire has been found not guilty of fraudulently claiming more than £13,000 in boarding school allowance for her son.

Master at Arms Eileen Harvey was living with her husband and son in Alton, in 2010 when she was given a new position at HMS Neptune in Clyde naval base in Scotland.

She was accused at a court martial trial at Portsmouth Naval Base of falsely claiming in personnel forms that her family would be moving with her to Helensburgh, Scotland.

The allegations included fraudulently applying for boarding school allowance, called continuity education allowance (CEA), worth a total of £13,150.

But the senior rating was acquitted of the three charges of making a false record and three offences of fraud.

The court martial heard that MAA Harvey had told investigators that she had made an ''admin error'' and told them: ''I know how it looks but it's just not like that.''