Ernest Saunders - Sentence and Appeal

Sentence and Appeal

A DTI report described him as a man who did "unjustifiable favours for friends and himself".

Saunders appealed against his sentence of five years in prison, and on 16 May 1991, the sentence was reduced to two and a half years. Lord Justice Neill said that he was satisfied that Saunders was suffering from pre-senile dementia associated with Alzheimer's disease, which is incurable. With full parole, Saunders was released from Ford Open Prison on 28 June 1991 having served only ten months of his sentence. After his release, he recovered from the symptoms which had led to the diagnosis.

Since then, Saunders has worked as a business consultant, including advising mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse from its early days until prior to its flotation. Charles Dunstone, the Chief Executive of Carphone Warehouse, said: "We were young guys who didn’t know what we were doing. He made us think about the questions we ought to ask or the information we ought to look at."

He was later appointed chairman of the executive committee of a US-based multinational petrol credit-card company, Harpur-Gelco.

Saunders also acted as a consultant to Seed International Ltd, a company based in the Cayman Islands. Seed offered investments in a variety of fields including wine, property, oil and gas exploration through Ocean International Marketing, their sales subsidiary with offices in Rotterdam.