THE former manager of Swindon's Brunel Centre moonlighted as a consultant and paid himself a unauthorised fee from the coffers of another shopping mall he went on to manage, a jury heard today.

Steven Fawke said he had carried out consultancy work for a company he later awarded a contract to improve the disabled toilets at Broad Stree Mall in Reading.

The 58-year-old then paid himself more than £3,000 from his employers claiming he was owed it by the refurbishment specialists.

The shortfall of £3,245 was only found to be missing when Fawke left his job and moved to the Brunel.

An undated cheque stub that just had a name of a mystery company on was left in the cheque book and the jury at Reading Crown Court heard the money had been paid into Fawke's account which he shared with his wife.

Fawke denies a single count of theft on or before April 11, 2012.

Hassan Baig, prosecuting at Reading Crown Court, said Fawke claimed that he was owed the £3,245 by a company he employed to carry out refurbishment work to the disabled toilets at the Broad Street Mall in Reading, Berks and transferred the money into his account to write off the debt.

Mr Baig said that during an audit of the Broad Street Mall account after he had left, an "unauthorised credit" to Mr Fawke's joint account with his wife in the sum of £3,245 was discovered.

Mr Baig said that the stub which corresponded to the cheque was undated, but it stated the payment of £3,245 went to a different company, called Felgate.

Fawke, aged 58 years, later told police that he was owed the money from the firm he hired to improve the toilets - Elite Management Solutions - for some consultancy work that he did with them.

However the boss of EMS today told jurors that the consultancy work was completely separate to anything relating to the shopping centre - and he had nothing to do with the missing money.

Mr Baig told the seven women and five men on the jury: "Mr Fawke said he was owed money by EMS. He did some consultant work for them. As a result of being owed money, he asked them for a payment and was told to take the money from the account and they wouldn't bill for that particular amount.

"What the Crown anticipate the defendant to say is he was entitled to that money and he had got that in the course of his business, as a second job with EMS. It's the Crown's case he was never entitled to that money, and he knew exactly what was going on."

David Brown, director of EMS, denied making a separate payment to Fawke.

He told the jury that he did use Fawke's business expertise in a consultancy capacity when he was setting up a cleaning company, and would pay him for this. However he stopped this when he employed a full-time consultant.

Mr Brown told the jury that these payments would be made via cheque or a BACS transfer straight to Fawke's account. He was allowed to make payments in this manner to a third party.

Referring to Fawke's consultancy work with EMS, Mr Brown said: "We treated it as a totally separate operation - it wasn't anything that we did with Broad Street Mall, as far as we were concerned."

Under cross examination from Christopher Blake, defending Fawke, Mr Brown said he was "100 per cent sure" there were no additional cash payments made to the defendant.

Fawke, of Amazon Close, Basingstoke denies a single count of theft. The trial, at Reading Crown Court, continues tomorrow.