An Army finance sergeant was cleared today of stealing £100,000 from the SAS.

Staff Sergeant Mark McKay, 35, of the Adjutant General’s Corps (AGC), was found not guilty of stealing $200,000 from a cash office at the Hereford base of 22 Special Air Service (SAS), to whom he was attached when the elite unit deployed to the Gulf in February 2003 for the second Iraq war.

At a week-long court martial at Bulford military court in Wiltshire, Sgt McKay claimed he made the sum legitimately by running his own privately-funded tuck shop, selling alcohol, toiletries and even Viagra to the 5,000 American servicepeople, 70 Australian soldiers and 200 UK troops at his base in the Gulf.

Breaking down as he gave evidence, he said he felt “ashamed” at having made so much money out of his colleagues.

A board of five Army officers - the military equivalent of a jury - took an hour and 20 minutes to find the father-of-two not guilty.

Although the prosecution alleged that Sgt McKay stole Ministry of Defence cash from an SAS cash office, they were not able to prove it actually belonged to the MoD or that anyone had noticed it was missing from regimental accounts.

Sgt McKay’s alleged dishonesty came to light in April 2006 when military police, acting on a tip-off, searched his home in Ballykelly, Northern Ireland, where he was posted in July 2004 after leaving the SAS.

They found $200,000 in plastic bags hidden in a terracotta plant pot outside McKay’s front door, the court martial heard.

Sgt McKay maintained in court that the sum was just part of the $371,000 he had made from his Gulf-based shop, which he ran in addition to his official role as a finance clerk.

He claimed that during his 12-week deployment with the SAS, from February to May 2003, he bought, among other things, cases of beer for $20 and sold them on for up to $100.

Sgt McKay initially told military police the $200,000 was surplus from the SAS’s Gulf War account, which he closed in 2003 to his bosses’ satisfaction. But at his trial he admitted that this was not true, and that in fact the cash was profit from his personal war zone shop.

He also said he had been reluctant to tell the truth because he was not allowed to talk about SAS operations.

McKay, now based at Camberley in Surrey, said he had concealed the cash in a flower pot in Ballykelly to hide it from his wife, with whom he was breaking up at the time.

Times Recommends

• Donor organ allowed child’s own heart to heal
• Michael Jackson: Not the final chapter
• Brüno toned down for 15 rating