Four officers from a Special Forces unit are to stand trial for fraud after allegedly selling off spent ammunition worth £20,000.
The ten-ton haul of brass casings was taken to American recycling centers and the proceeds were not submitted to the Ministry of Defence.
They were allegedly in training for the Special Forces Support Group, an elite special forces group that fights alongside SAS to carry out top secret missions.
The prosecutors claim that Dean Pilcher, Stephen Child, and Jason Davidson were Captains and Paul Lindsay Warrant Officers. They conspired to deprive MoD of the money they received from the sales. The charges were denied by them.
The two-week Catterick military trial in North Yorkshire, which begins on January 10, will examine the claims that around 100 SFSG soldiers were deployed to Fort Knox, Kentucky in training sorties between 2017-19 (pictured).
The trial will begin on January 10th at Catterick Military Court in North Yorkshire. It will be open for two weeks.
Before each exercise their ammunition, worth at least £1million, was flown from the UK by the RAF.
The surplus and used ammunition was supposed to be flown home, but because of a lack of aircraft, secure facilities were rented for storage and the ten-ton of old casings sold.
According to the Service Prosecuting Authority, the officers were accused of failing to report the money they received in cash for brass casings. As a juror, a five-member court martial board made up of military officers will serve as the judge.
If found guilty, the officers could be sentenced to imprisonment and then dismissed. Parachute Regiment Captain Child has been in the Army for over 30 years. In 2019 he was posted from the SFSG to the Army’s Infantry Battle School, where he is a senior instructor.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Captain Pilcher spent two-and-a-half years at SFSG headquarters in South Wales as a ‘senior supply chain manager, responsible for multi-million account inventory programme in multiple areas’.
According to military court records, Warrant Officer Class 2 Davidson, a Parachute Regiment Warrant Officer, is currently serving with the 3rd Battalion’s Parachute Regiment while Warrant officer Class 1 Lindsay is in Canada at the BATUS British Army Training Centre.
The SFSG is composed of Parachute Regiment and Royal Marines troops. While details about its operations remain secret, its soldiers have been known to be fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria as well as the Taliban in Afghanistan.
An Army spokesman confirmed the officers would stand trial, but added: ‘As the process is ongoing, it would be inappropriate to comment further.’