Scottish banker jailed for £21M RBS fraud

EDINBURGH – Donald MacKenzie was jailed in late June for carrying out a £21 million fraud at Royal Bank of Scotland – said to be Scotland's largest ever by police. MacKenzie, however, benefited very little from the cash itself. Rather, he used false entries into a computer system to improve the volume of loans he gave to key clients. As a result of his legerdemain , he was named 'business manager of the year' three time in a row and saw his salary rise above £50,000 a year.

The fraud took place between April 1999 and March 2004, while MacKenzie was employed in the bank's branch in Princes Street, Edinburgh. The fraud was discovered when the bank introduced a new computer system in 2004, but it crashed and the fault was found to be the result of the data that MacKenzie had entered.

MacKenzie, who had set up some 1,200 false accounts, was said to be operating a "bank within a bank".