Jason Zadrozny, an independent councillor and leader of Ashfield District Council in Nottinghamshire, is on trial accused of setting up a fake heritage society to fraudulently obtain public funds and blaming the missing money on a colleague who had since died. Prosecutors allege the Ashfield Heritage Society "never existed and never did anything", and that Zadrozny, who earned £50,000 a year but was often in debt, created it because he urgently needed money, some of which was allegedly used to buy a house with two fellow councillors. He faces 12 counts of fraud and four counts of tax evasion, all of which he denies.

Northampton Crown Court heard that Zadrozny opened a bank account for the society in February 2018 and, days later, applied for £7,500 in grant funding, giving a non-existent address and claiming the money would fund a new laptop and war memorial repairs; a further £1,600 was later withdrawn in cash for "commemorative events" with no records of how it was spent. Police interview transcripts revealed Zadrozny claimed he handed the cash to Tony Brewer, a former council chairman who died of Covid in 2020, to carry out the repair work, but the interview collapsed when officers noted that both people he named to corroborate his account were dead. The investigation began after prospective election candidate Catherine Mason queried the society's activities, and prosecutor James Varley told jurors Zadrozny's account was "clearly a first stab at blaming" Brewer.