IT would be naive to expect fraudster Edward McKenzie-Green to have a shred of dignity or integrity and pay back the £29,000 golden handshake he took when he slinked out of Oxfam.

Yesterday McKenzie-Green, Oxfam’s one-time head of counter fraud, was jailed for two years and five months after being caught conning the charity out of more than £64,000.

It emerged in court that McKenzie-Green’s behaviour had been under investigation and he eventually resigned, pocketing a £29,000 package.

One imagines he couldn’t believe his luck, topping up his ill-gotten gains with a nice little bonus.

Setting aside why Oxfam was making so generous a payment for someone under investigation, it is now beholden on the charity to claw back this money along with that which McKenzie-Green defrauded.

Apparently he signed a declaration that he had not committed gross misconduct so surely Oxfam is on very safe legal ground.

This is a man, after all, who was swindling an organisation that exists to help people in desperate peril and then continued to claim he was innocent as he sought to stop press coverage of some of his case.

This claim that he was only “putting money aside” because he feared losing his job almost masks this was just naked theft.

McKenzie-Green simply must not profit by a single penny from his larceny. And that includes his exit package, because otherwise, ultimately, crime would have paid.