Judge issues arrest warrant for disgraced former minister and banking group boss Paul Flowers. A judge has issued an arrest warrant for a disgraced former minister and banking group boss who acquired the nickname “Crystal Methodist”. Paul Flowers, 74, was due to be sentenced for fraud at Manchester crown court but failed to turn up. Flowers is a former Methodist minister who served as chairman of the Co-operative Bank. He hit the headlines after the Mail on Sunday, in 2013, published secretly filmed footage of him handing over £300 in cash for crystal meth and other drugs in Leeds.
In July last year, Flowers pleaded guilty to fraud charges amounting to £100,000 after he had abused his position as the executor of the will and holder of power of attorney for a woman named Margaret Jarvis. At Friday’s sentence hearing a judge was told that Flowers had “disengaged” with his legal team, although a solicitor had contacted him on Thursday night to explain the consequences of not attending court.
Judge Nicholas Dean KC, the honorary recorder of Manchester, issued a warrant not backed for bail. A number of preliminary hearings in the case were previously aborted when Flowers cited health problems, and in November 2023 another crown court judge issued a similar warrant when Flowers did not appear as scheduled. Dean noted the defendant had “fragile mental health” but that an immediate custodial sentence could be “almost inevitable” for an offence over a sustained period involving a “vulnerable victim”, which he said may explain why the defendant had not attended.
The Mail on Sunday story, headlined “Crystal meth shame of bank chief”, was the starting point for a very rapid and public decline in Flowers’ fortunes. After it, he pleaded guilty at Leeds magistrates court to possessing cocaine, crystal meth and ketamine and was fined £400. Flowers became known as the Crystal Methodist and further tabloid stories followed about his use of drugs and male escorts.
He stood down as chairman of the Co-operative Bank, a post he had held for more than three years after a £1.5bn hole was discovered in its finances but before the Mail on Sunday story. Flowers, a former Labour councillor in Rochdale and Bradford, was later banned from the financial services industry after the City watchdog found he demonstrated the “lack of fitness and propriety required” to work in the sector.
The Financial Conduct Authority concluded he used his work mobile telephone to make a number of inappropriate telephone calls to a premium-rate chat line and he used his work email account to send and receive sexually explicit and otherwise inappropriate messages, and to discuss illegal drugs. In a 2016 interview with the Guardian, Flowers admitted taking drugs and having sex with male prostitutes during his chairmanship of the Co-operative Bank. But he insisted he was someone who tried to be “a decent Christian person”.
