Writing her will as she reached her 70th birthday, retired headteacher Margaret Jarvis decided to leave her money to charity. As a devout Methodist, she believed in helping others less fortunate.
There would be cash for South African orphans, abandoned donkeys and for guide dogs, for research into Alzheimer’s and for those already suffering from dementia.
And who better to oversee her wishes when she was gone than a man of the cloth?
So it was that she decided to appoint a good friend, the Reverend Paul Flowers, as the executor of her will and also to give him control of her financial affairs should she become too ill to manage them herself.
Not only had she known him since he was appointed as the minister at her church in Hampshire; he had experience working in banking and finance, too.
Former Co-op bank chief and church minister Paul Flowers faces jail for taking £100,000 his friend had left to orphans. Pictured: Flowers at Manchester Crown Court earlier this year
Image of Margaret Jarvis, a devout Methodist who believed in helping others less fortunate. After she appointed Paul Flowers as the executor of her will, her trust was betrayed by the former Co-op bank chief and church minister, who blew £100,000 on himself
Palaiokastritsa beach on Corfu islands, Greece. Flowers reportedly spent £341 of Jarvis’ money on Hotel Domenico in Corfu
But, as The Mail on Sunday can today exclusively reveal, what Miss Jarvis could never have foreseen when she signed that will was how Flowers would one day callously betray the trust she had placed in him.
Due to advanced dementia, she would never understand how her ‘friend’ – then the chairman of Co-op Bank – would later be forced to resign after a £1.5 billion black hole was discovered in its finances, in a scandal that nearly led to the collapse of the bank.
Nor would she comprehend his nickname ‘The Crystal Methodist’, given to him after The Mail on Sunday unveiled film footage of Flowers apparently buying cocaine and crystal meth from a drug dealer.
And as it would turn out for Miss Jarvis, Flowers had other ideas for her money, too.
Instead of helping needy children, the disabled and sick, Flowers blew £100,000 of her savings on an altogether less worthy cause: himself. Almost £1,500 went on purchases from The Wine Society and more than £100 on theatre tickets.
Then there were holidays and cruises – £1,326 to P&O, £980 to Eurostar and £341 to the Hotel Domenico in Corfu, which boasts an outdoor pool and access to a stunning beach.
And let’s not forget the money for home improvements – £1,275, spent on floor coverings from a carpet shop for his house in Salford, Greater Manchester.
On top of that, tens of thousands of pounds in cash was taken in the fraud, which was only discovered after Miss Jarvis’s death.
This week, a close relative of Miss Jarvis, speaking about the case for the first time, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘She trusted him to do this one thing for her. I have no idea why he did what he did – I don’t know what he was thinking.
‘On the one side you could say that it is a victimless crime because Margaret has passed away, because she does not know that he has let her down.
‘But it isn’t victimless, because those charities would have been supporting people – what about those people?’
Flowers, who was also a Labour councillor in both Rochdale and Bradford, became the chairman of Co-op Bank in April 2010 until he was forced to resign from his £132,000-a-year post in June 2013.
Six months later – days after a disastrous appearance before the Treasury select committee and MPs branding him ‘financially illiterate’ – he was filmed apparently counting out £300 for a drugs deal. In May 2014, Flowers was fined £525 after pleading guilty to possession of cocaine, crystal meth and ketamine at Leeds magistrates’ court.
The court heard that the ‘stress’ of his Co-op job and ‘caring for his terminally ill mother’ were reasons for his drug use.
He was later caught on video snorting cocaine and entertaining rent boys at his home.
Former disgraced Co-Op Chairman Paul Flowers at Manchester Crown Court on the January 31, 2024
Flowers discussed his seedy lifestyle in an interview with the BBC’s Newsnight, admitting: ‘I have sinned.’
Judging from what emerged last week, those sins were more extensive than had been previously thought.
Appearing at Manchester Crown Court, the 74-year-old admitted withdrawing some £70,000 of Miss Jarvis’s money in cash and using another £30,000 to buy goods and services.
The court heard that the fraud totalled more than £180,000, but Flowers had submitted a basis of plea, which was accepted by prosecutors, in which he admitted just under £100,000 worth of fraudulent activity.
The 18 offences he pleaded guilty to span the time when he held power of attorney and, later, was executor of Miss Jarvis’s estate.
The bulk of the offences were committed in 2016 and 2017.
Flowers was warned he could face jail when sentenced in October, with the crimes described as a ‘gross breach of trust’.
He first met Miss Jarvis in the late 1970s. Born in Portsmouth, he was raised in nearby Eastleigh. Having graduated with a degree in theology, he briefly worked in banking before becoming a Methodist minister – firstly in Bradford, West Yorkshire, and then in 1978 moving to Hedge End in Eastleigh.
He would later go on to sit as a trustee on the body that manages the church’s invested funds and property.
Miss Jarvis, then the headteacher at Hollybrook First School in Southampton, ran the Girls’ Brigade and the Sunday school at the Hedge End Methodist church.
The pair quickly grew to become the ‘closest of friends’, a friendship that survived Flowers’s first brush with the law.
In 1981 his local ministry was cut short after he was convicted of indecency following an incident in a public toilet with a trucker.
Paul Flowers is facing jail after he admitted swindling a female friend of around £100,000 to pay for wine, luxury holidays abroad and trips to the theatre (pictured on October 4, 2023)
Friends say that while Miss Jarvis did not always approve of certain aspects of his lifestyle, she thought the criticism he received was not always fair.
In the years that followed, the pair would visit each other regularly. In 2004, Miss Jarvis turned 70 and drew up a new will in which she appointed Flowers to be her sole executor.
With no children of her own, she did not wish to burden other relatives with the task of sorting out her estate. As well as owning a £250,000 home, she had substantial savings.
Under the terms of the will, a publicly available copy of which The Mail on Sunday has seen, modest cash gifts were assigned to two relatives.
The sum of £1,000 was to be paid to Flowers.
The rest of Miss Jarvis’s wealth was to be divided among charities ‘close to her heart’. Many had links to the church.
These included one in South Africa dedicated to helping children and babies who had suffered trauma in their early lives as a result of Aids, poverty and abuse.
Other charities to benefit were a donkey sanctuary in Sidmouth, Guide Dogs For The Blind, Hearing Dogs For Deaf People and a cancer charity.
Miss Jarvis also left money to Alzheimer’s Research UK and Methodist Homes For The Aged, to use for dementia care. Her mother had suffered from dementia – as she would too.
A friend said: ‘One of the reasons she chose Paul as executor was because he knew and had been involved with some of the charities and she thought he would be able to deal with contacting them and the admin more easily.’
At about the same time she also signed a legal document putting Flowers in charge of her financial affairs, granting him a Lasting Power Of Attorney should she be unable to manage them herself. Her family were happy with the arrangement.
‘Margaret was a headteacher through and through, she knew her mind,’ said a relative. ‘You would have been in no doubt about things being her decision and you wouldn’t have questioned them.
‘She was a strong and determined type of lady.
‘She’d known him years, she knew him, she liked him, she trusted him.’ By 2009 Miss Jarvis’s health had started to deteriorate and she began to show signs of dementia.
She would later be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
When she then moved into a care home, Flowers was granted control of her bank account and also oversaw the sale of her home. From then on he was in charge of paying all her bills.
Other than some delays with sending payments from time to time, there were no issues with the arrangement or any cause for suspicion – even during the time that he was involved in the Co-op inquiry.
‘She was in a care home when he used to be on the news, when she still had some lucid days,’ said the relative. ‘One time, when he was on telly, she suddenly said “That’s Paul!”.
‘We tried to explain what the inquiry was about but her dementia was too advanced for her to understand what we were saying and she quickly lost interest.’
The court heard the ‘stress’ of his Co-op bank job and ‘caring for his terminally ill mother’ were reasons for his drug use (stock image)
The fallout of the scandal saw Flowers not only lose his job but his reputation as well.
He was ultimately banned from working in financial services and, having been suspended from the church, removed as a Methodist minister.
Despite undergoing what he described as ‘lifechanging’ rehab, in March 2016, his drug-taking was once again exposed when he was filmed apparently snorting cocaine and ketamine as he entertained four naked rent boys at a hot-tub party in his back garden.
One escort, named Kris, told a Sunday tabloid at the time: ‘He said, “To good health” as he snorted. There were drugs everywhere, ketamine, coke.’
Seven months later, in October 2016, Miss Jarvis died aged 82.
Flowers helped to arrange her funeral service at the Hedge End Methodist Church.
As executor of her estate, he still controlled her finances and so had to book the cars, the refreshments and pay for flowers. He attended the service but, having been suspended by the Methodist church, he did not officiate at it.
According to probate documents Miss Jarvis left an estate worth less than £83,000 after liabilities.
Her family, who had not seen any bank statements during Flowers’s stewardship, had no suspicions anything untoward was going on.
‘I had no reason to think he wasn’t doing what he was supposed to be doing,’ said the relative.
The first she knew about it was when a detective from Manchester Police contacted her out of the blue in July 2019.
The Mail understands that the bank had initially contacted police after a single transaction in Miss Jarvis’s account had been flagged as potentially suspicious.
Initially, the family assumed the fraud must have been caused by someone hacking into their dead relative’s account. They were shocked to learn it was Flowers who police were investigating.
The case was delayed by Covid and by the backlogs in the court – but also by Flowers himself. The day before he was due to appear in court last August, Flowers suffered a stroke.
He was ordered to attend court in person last week following the execution of a warrant.
Defence barrister Bob Elias, who asked for pre-sentence reports to be drawn up, noting Flowers, who appeared in court using a walking frame, was in ‘poor health’.
Attempts by The Mail on Sunday to contact Flowers at his three- storey semi-detached home on a modern estate in Salford that he purchased for £180,000 in 2014 came to nothing.
The knocker on the faded red door at the front of the home is in the shape of a mitred bishop with his hands clasped in prayer.
Given the nature of the crimes he has committed, Flowers could do with some divine intervention ahead of his sentencing this autumn.