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A BBC accountant who controlled programme budgets for Doctor Who and Casualty has been jailed for two years after pleading guilty to 17 charges of fraud amounting to £80,000.

Oliver Ager, 35, was said at Cardiff Crown Court to have committed the offences “in abuse of his position” with BBC Wales.

Ager, of Rock Avenue, Nailsea, Somerset, was said to have been dismissed from his job and to have paid back £30,000 of the money from his pension fund.

There was no order made in respect of the remaining sum. He will serve half the two-year term in prison before being released on licence.

A spokeswoman for BBC Wales said: “When the BBC became aware of the serious allegations it contacted the police and began an internal investigation which led to Oliver Ager’s dismissal in October 2012. Oliver Ager has since pleaded guilty to committing fraud and has now been sentenced.

“Since Oliver Ager committed these crimes the BBC has reviewed its cash processes and ensured that there is additional oversight to prevent a crime like this from happening again.”

The BBC has now said that it has reviewed it processes to prevent a repeat of the situation.

A spokesman said today: "When the BBC became aware of the serious allegations it contacted the police and began an internal investigation which led to Oliver Ager's dismissal in October 2012.

"Oliver Ager has since pleaded guilty to committing fraud and has now been sentenced.

"Since Oliver Ager committed these crimes the BBC has reviewed its cash processes and ensured that there is additional oversight to prevent a crime like this from happening again."

BBC Wales was not prepared to disclose any further details of Ager’s crimes, on the advice of BBC lawyers in London.

Ager worked as a production accountant on Doctor Who for 20 episodes in 2007 and 2008, while David Tennant played The Doctor.

He then moved over to work in a similar capacity for Casualty on seven episodes between 2008 and 2012, during which period the programme moved its base from Bristol to Cardiff.

He was also a director of an independent production company called Different Productions Ltd from December 2011 until October 2012, the month he was dismissed by the BBC.

Most staff working at BBC Wales’ Roath Lock studios in Cardiff Bay, where the Doctor Who and Casualty production teams are based, were not even aware that Ager had been dismissed.

A BBC Wales source told us: “He had a very heavy Bristolian accent and you always knew he was around when he was in earshot. But people involved in drama can move around a lot and there was an assumption he’d gone off to another studio.

“The fraudulent activity he was involved with certainly wasn’t known about widely.”