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Disgraced former Co-operative Bank chairman Paul Flowers has been ordered by a judge to pay back £184,000 he stole from an elderly spinster.

Flowers, 75, had betrayed his friend of many years, Margaret Jarvis, plundering her cash to spend on drugs, holidays and gifts for himself.

Flowers, a former Labour councillor in Rochdale and Bradford and a church minister, dubbed the “Crystal Methodist” after a newspaper drugs sting, had been made power of attorney and executor of the will of Miss Jarvis, a teetotal retired teacher, who never married and had no children.

He pleaded guilty to multiple counts of fraud in July 2024 at Manchester Crown Court and was jailed for three years.

He will have two and a half years added to that prison sentence if he does not pay the full amoun

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