An accountant from Birmingham who altered his clients' tax returns and lied about his own financial affairs to make fraudulent claims totalling £186,000 has been given a two year jail sentence.

Akeel Mirza manipulated clients' documents to claim refunds of £140,000. When one client started to ask questions about what he was doing, Mirza paid back some of the cash to HMRC, claiming an error had been made.

A few months later Mirza committed another fraud by sending HMRC a series of fake self assessment tax returns He also falsely claimed his own business, in Coventry, was in trouble and claimed refunds totalling £46,000.

Sentencing Mirza at Warwickshire Justice Centre, recorder Mr Tickle said: 'Your greed, arrogance, and selfishness motivated you to commit the fraud.'

Assistant director of investigation at HMRC, Paul Barton, said: 'This was blatant theft by an accountant who abused his position of trust and used his specialist knowledge to fraudulently line his own pockets.'