An accounts manager with an obsession for shopping stole more than £300,000 from her unsuspecting Faversham employers, a court heard.

Suffering from chronic low self-esteem, Hayley Mwemi-Harris became fixated with designer clothes and other goods as a way of making her feel better about herself.

But the thrill was often in the buying and many of the outfits remained in a cupboard with the labels still intact and shoes still in the original boxes.

The 25-year-old sent £50,000 belonging to the construction company where she worked to her husband in Kenya and paid for their apartment there to be decorated.

Every time she visited the African country she bought new clothes and left them there for the poor local women.

Sobbing Mwemi-Harris was jailed for three years on Thursday after admitting three charges of obtaining a money transfer by deception and one of fraud. She asked for 43 other offences to be considered.

Maidstone Crown Court heard Mwemi-Harris started work as a bookkeeper for R. J. Parry Ltd, of John Hall, Close, Faversham, in 2002 and two years later was promoted to accounts manager.

In November last year, managing director Richard Parry arranged for a random audit of the company accounts and alarming discrepancies were found.

Jo Cope, prosecuting, said it emerged while Mwemi-Harris was on holiday in Kenya that she had systematically defrauded the company by falsifying accounts.

When her home in Goldfinch Close, Faversham, was searched it was discovered a large number of new or almost new items, including laptop computers, a television and a DVD player, had been bought with company funds.

One of the methods Mwemi-Harris used to get more cash was to boost her salary from £231 a month to £1,231.

Mrs Cope said the company ran into difficulties as a result of Mwemi-Harris’s dishonesty but had since recovered.