A CROWN Office worker who broke the Official Secrets Act and the Data Protection Act by leaking confidential information about court cases to friends has been jailed for 18 months.
Iain Sawers, 25, took information from databases about court cases and passed it on to people he knew.
The office worker was convicted of attempting to pervert the course of justice and breaching both acts by a jury after a trial at Edinburgh Sheriff Court earlier this month.
The court heard Sawers, who worked for the Scottish capital's procurator fiscal, had leaked the names and addresses of people who were involved in court cases.
He was caught after police began investigating his close friend Calum Stewart, 27, on charges of breaching bail and attempting to pervert the course of justice by threatening his former partner into not giving evidence in a trial in July 2013.
Stewart paid for her and her mother to go on holiday to Benidorm on the week of the trial.
Phone records showed that between April 2008 and January 2014, Sawers had passed on information to others on nine occasions.
Sheriff Kenneth Maciver yesterday jailed Stewart for 21 months after he was found guilty of trying to pervert the course of justice and breach of bail.
Jailing Sawers for 18 months, the sheriff said his actions betrayed his colleagues. He added: "In my 40 years in the law, I have never came across a case like this. The public need to have absolute trust in the public prosecution authority. The procurator fiscal service has an obligation to protect confidential information."
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