ONE of the three NatWest bankers facing jail for their part in the Enron scandal is trying to delay the start of his jail term in America. Gary Mulgrew is asking for a two-week reprieve after his former wife Laura removed their six-year-old daughter from Britain to live in Tunisia.

Mulgrew, 45, is one of the “NatWest Three” who in November pleaded guilty to a fraud charge related to the collapse of Enron. He faces three years behind bars.

After his guilty plea, Mulgrew asked for permission to return to Britain from Texas. In papers lodged in a Houston court, his lawyers said he needed to return “in order to participate in a judicial proceeding in the UK High Court of Justice and a meeting with UK government officials that are necessary to safeguard the welfare of his missing six-year-old daughter, Cara Katrina Mulgrew, who has been taken by Mr Mulgrew’s ex-wife from the UK to live in Tunisia with her mother’s new boyfriend ‘Abdul’.”

Mulgrew’s plea to return to Britain was rejected. But now he is asking that he should at least be allowed to remain outside jail for two weeks after formal sentencing, due on February 22.

The judge in the case will have the option of sending Mulgrew and his two accomplices straight to jail or setting a future date when they should start their sentence.

In court papers, Mulgrew’s lawyers said: “Mr Mulgrew’s ex-wife has denied him any contact with his daughter for over a year.

Neither he nor his family members have been able to speak to her in that time period. Mrs Mulgrew has ignored a UK High Court order that makes Cara Katrina a ward of the UK court and requires her to be returned to the UK . . . Mr Mulgrew has been unable to confirm that his daughter is safe and that appropriate arrangements have been made in Tunisia for her education, medical care and upbringing.”

Mulgrew divorced his American-born wife in March 2006 after 15 years of marriage. Before splitting up, the couple lived in a nine-bedroom Queen Anne rectory in Suffolk. The couple had two children. After they separated, Cara went to live with her mother. An older son, Calum, went to live with his father and is now with Mulgrew’s girlfriend.

Mulgrew has not seen Katrina in the 18 months since he was sent to America with the other NatWest Three defendants, Giles Darby and David Bermingham, to face trail.

Mulgrew’s mother is Trish Godman, a member of the Scottish parliament. After the deal that saw her son and his former NatWest colleagues admit a specimen charge of fraud, she said they were victims of “a Texan judicial system which has bled them financially dry and coerced them into a plea bargain”.

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