AN ACCOUNTANT has been convicted of being part of a fraud conspiracy at an Oxfordshire software firm.

Mark Woodbridge was yesterday found guilty of plotting to defraud the shareholders of Torex Retail, which had offices in Witney and Banbury.

The 42-year-old was convicted of two counts of conspiracy to defraud between May 1, 2006, and January 26, 2007, and one count of false accounting between May 1 and August 15, 2006.

He was the company’s group financial accountant and still faces two further false accounting charges, alleged to have taken place during the same period.

Woodbridge, of Kineton, Warwickshire, denied all the charges during a 14-week trial that started following a long investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.

He has been tried alongside former Torex legal director Nigel Horn, of The Avenue, Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire. Horn denies one count of conspiracy to defraud between November 1, 2006, and January 26, 2007.

Woodbridge showed no emotion in the dock as a jury in Oxford Crown Court returned three unanimous guilty verdicts following 15 hours and 41 minutes of deliberations.

It has not yet reached a decision on the remaining two counts of false accounting against Woodbridge and the single count against Horn.

Torex Retail made the software for electronic tills and in 2006 employed 3,000 people in around a dozen offices around the world.

The company’s former chairman Robert Loosemore and chief executive Christopher Moore admitted two charges of conspiracy to defraud in January.

Woodbridge has now been convicted of falsifying the firm’s interim financial statement published on August 14, 2006, by entering almost £2m that should not have been there.

He has also been found guilty, together with Moore and Loosemore, of adding a further £6.5m into the interim statement to inflate the company’s value.

To cover these transactions up he drafted what the prosecution has described as two “sham” agreements, again in collaboration with Moore and Loosemore.

During his evidence from the witness box Woodbridge repeatedly denied having responsibility for these contracts and instead blamed his former bosses.

He said: “I did my best with what I had been given.

“And this agreement was ultimately signed by Moore and Loosemore.”

Prosecutor Gibson Grenfell said: “The prosecution case in a nutshell is that the defendant Woodbridge, together with Moore and Loosemore, wanted to present the financial position of Torex in as good a light as possible and decided, agreed between them, to do that dishonestly by inflating the interim figures.”