HE was once a heroic Metropolitan Police inspector commended by the Queen for arresting an armed IRA bomber and feted for foiling a terrorist plot to blow up an airliner. But yesterday Frank Monti was jailed for 18 months for stealing £15,500 from the Roman Catholic Church in Wales.
Monti, 59, acting as a financial secretary for the diocese of Menevia, raided funds to pay off debts of £100,000 he ran up on credit cards.
And his string of thefts were not only motivated by his disastrous financial situation.
On one occasion he organised a bank transfer using church funds to buy himself a £6,000 Bechstein Grand Piano from a specialist supplier in Leeds.
A Bechstein Grand was used by the Beatles in 1968 to record one of their biggest hits, Hey Jude.
Monti, who grew up in Swansea as part of a Welsh Italian family, gave up his police job in the late 1990s after tackling a criminal wielding a stun gun. The incident left him having to walk with a stick.
He returned to South Wales with his wife and became financial secretary of the Roman Catholic diocese of Menevia, which covers a large part of South, Mid and West Wales.
Jim Davis, prosecuting at Swansea Crown Court, said Monti’s downfall was his decision to buy the grand piano using church funds.
A chief accountant at the diocesan office in Convent Street, Swansea, became suspicious in 2005 after seeing a money transfer to Besbrode Pianos of Leeds.
Monti’s usual tasks were to write cheques to contractors doing work for Catholic churches, schools or homes in South Wales.
An investigation was launched and it was discovered Monti had been writing out the names of contractors on cheque stubs but making out the actual cheques to cash and collecting the money at banks in Swansea.
On one occasion, Monti pocketed a cheque for £1,380 from the estate of churchgoer Winnifred Willis, of Cardigan, who had left the money to the diocese in her will.
When confronted by diocesan solicitor Kevin Lane, Monti immediately resigned, claiming what he had done was down to honest mistakes.
When interviewed by police he denied any wrong doing and it was not until the case was due to go to trial earlier this year that he finally admitted seven offences of theft from diocesan trustees over 14 months between October 2005 and December 2006.
He also pleaded guilty to obtaining a £6,000 money transfer by deception in January 2007 to pay for the piano.
Judge Huw Davies told Monti yesterday: “These offences took place against a background of a life lived in earlier years in an entirely different fashion.
“Your career as a police office in Metropolitan London was a successful one adorned by commendations for valuable service.
“But these offences amount to a breach of a high degree of trust placed in you.”
Jailing Monti for 18 months the judge said the starting point for the offences would have been 20 months had it not been for his past public service and bravery.
Monti’s barrister Tom Crowther said following the offences the ex-policeman’s marriage had been ruined and the respect he had built up in his past career had ben “erased”.
Pointing out that Monti had paid back the stolen money, along with loans he had obtained from the diocese, he said his client had distinguished himself with bravery in high profile cases.
He said that in 1978 Monti was commended both by the Queen and the Metropolitan Police for arresting armed IRA member Gerard Tuite in North London.
In 1982, Monti received another commendation for being part of a Metropolitan Police team which uncovered a plot by Palestinian terrorists to bomb an El Al plane bound for Cairo.
Asked by the judge how Monti had managed to run up debts of £100,000, Mr Crowther answered with just one word: “Foolishness.”
He added: “Quite why he behaved like he did cannot be known. But he got into considerable debt.
“Also, when he left the police force due to the injury which left him partially paralysed he was disabled and frustrated.”
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