THE unelected peer made a Scotland Office minister by Boris Johnson was formerly director of a firm alongside an international fugitive being hunted by Interpol, The National can reveal.

Malcolm Offord, who was elevated to the House of Lords and given a ministerial role after failing to win a seat in Holyrood, was the director of Cashmaster International Ltd until November 2021. He had taken a non-executive director’s role after having bought the firm in 2014.

During his time at the company’s head, Offord saw the firm hire, and then promote to director, Matt Jaeger - a fraudster being hunted by Interpol.

It was Jaeger’s promotion to director - and his subsequent listing on Companies House - that led to his eventual capture and prosecution, The National has been told. Jaeger had reportedly been very hesitant about getting involved in any social media drives which the company was eager to promote.

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In 2017, a year after the Scotland Office said the firm had dismissed him for “gross misconduct”, Jaeger was sentenced to 12 months behind bars after he pled guilty to defrauding a Northern Irish woman and her family out of thousands of pounds.

He had claimed to have a ranch in Texas where he would marry the woman, and took payments totalling £4560 for flights that never materialised.

The crimes had been committed in 2010, after which he went on the run for six years, evading “extensive” police searches, according to a court report from the time.

Interpol was also made aware of a “vast amount” of similar allegations about Jaeger in England, Scotland and the US, according to the Derry Journal. The court was told that further victims had not made complaints because of their shame and embarrassment.

In 2015, Jaeger was made a director of Offord’s Cashmaster International Ltd. The National understands that he had been working for the firm for under a year and that none of the “hot leads” he had claimed to be able to source had materialised. There is no suggestion that anyone in the company knew about Jaeger's offence when they took him on.

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Jaeger reportedly spun a similar line while at the Scots firm to the fraud for which he was convicted, claiming he had sold up after being co-owner of a software firm running seismic surveys for the oil and gas business in Texas.

He also allegedly claimed to have houses on both US coasts, and a fiancee on the Eastern Sea Board.

“He could talk the talk but not deliver the results,” The National was told of Jaeger’s time at Cashmaster International.

A spokesperson for Offord said: “Matt Jaeger had no criminal record at the time he was hired by Cashmaster International Ltd in 2015. He was dismissed by the company after less than a year for gross misconduct.

“The company was later made aware he was the subject of a police investigation. As a non-executive director of the company Lord Offord was not involved in the recruitment of Matt Jaeger.”

The judge in the case which saw Jaeger sentenced said it was “rare to see someone so lacking in remorse and humanity towards other fellow humans”.

He added: “This man cares about one person in this world and that is himself. He has shown himself to be a liar, a cheat and a dishonest rogue."