Tory who kept right on stealing cheques

#111,000.

Gregory Lauder-Frost, payroll operations manager for Riverside Health

Authority in London, forged signatures on stolen salary cheques and paid

them into his bank accounts.

The Judge at Knightsbridge Crown Court told Lauder-Frost, 41, of

Pimlico Road, Pimlico, London, his criminal conduct over two years

amounted to a ''grave breach of trust''. Lauder-Frost has a house in

Duns, Berwickshire.

The court heard that the qualified accountant, who was earning about

#20,000 a year, stole 136 cheques between April 1989 and December 1991.

He admitted earlier this month eight charges of theft and asked for

128 similar offences to be considered.

Mr David Martin-Sperry, defending, said his client had stolen the

money only to help pay for an ''epic'' legal battle in three countries

involving a member of his family.

Prosecutor Michael Hucker told the court the cheques were made out to

doctors who had already left Riverside Health Authority.

In mitigation, defence counsel David Martin-Sperry told the court

Lauder-Frost had spent thousands of pounds on legal proceedings in

Britain, Poland, and the US.

''It is a very exceptional case. It's that rare animal, the fraud case

which is not motivated in any sense by greed,'' he said.

Mr Martin-Sperry said Lauder-Frost was ''disgusted, deeply ashamed''

at what he had done.

The Judge told him: ''I have taken into account . . . your very

distressing family circumstances but they did not entitle you in any way

to steal #100,000.''

Lauder-Frost was sacked from the health authority in January this year

for gross misconduct over the theft. He had worked for the authority

since 1979 supervising six payroll staff at Charing Cross Hospital.

A spokesman for the Monday club said Lauder-Frost was no longer a

member of the group. He is a vice-president of the extreme right-wing

group, Western Goals.

He was a member of the Monday Club for about 20 years, during which

time he was political secretary and chairman of the foreign affairs

committee.

In September, he shared the platform with Mr David Irving, the

historical revisionist with controversial views on the Holocaust.

Lauder-Frost was also instrumental in inviting Mussolini's

granddaughter, Italian right-winger Alessandra Mussolini, to speak at a

fringe meeting at last month's Conservative Party conference.

In 1989, he organised, through Western Goals, a visit to Britain of

Andries Treurnicht, leader of the pro-apartheid South African

Conservative Party.

Western Goals has close links with the German Republikaner Partei and

with France's National Front and its leader Jean-Marie le Pen.

European Dawn, a Western Goals journal, recently carried an interview

with Franz Shonuber, a former SS officer.

Lauder-Frost, who has worked with monarchists and nationalists in

Russia for 20 years, told how he once attempted to set up a ''Harrods

type tea shop'' in St Petersburg.

''I was working with a Russian company at the time but the plan fell

through because of communists.

At the sight of a group of photographers outside the court, he said:

''Anyone would think I was some war criminal. What a complete carry on.

All this publicity is most unfair.''