The East London court officer who faced the first prosecution under the 2010 Bribery Act has been sentenced to six years in prison.

Munir Yakub Patel was jailed for six years for misconduct in a public office, to be served concurrently with a three-year sentence for bribery.

Patel was working as an administrative clerk at Redbridge Magistrates’ Court in Ilford (pictured) when he took £500 in exchange for ‘getting rid’ of the details of a traffic summons. He pleaded guilty to both charges in October.

The court was told Patel helped more than 50 people to avoid prosecution in exchange for money and that between February 2009 and August 2011 he gave people advice about how to avoid being summoned over traffic penalties.

He was arrested after The Sun filmed him arranging a bribe to prevent a traffic penalty for speeding being entered on the court database.

Sentencing, His Honour Judge McCreath acknowledged Patel's age, guilty pleas and previous good character, but said the offences were 'very serious' and involved a 'very substantial breach of trust'.

He said: 'Your position as a court clerk had at its heart a duty to uphold and protect the integrity of the criminal justice process. What you did was to undermine it in a fundamental way.

'By doing what you did, you created a danger not only to the integrity of the process but also to public confidence in it. A justice system in which officials are prepared to take bribes in order to allow offenders to escape the proper consequences of their offending is inherently corrupt and is one which deserves no public respect and which will attract none.'

McCreath said the harm extended more widely because Patel’s actions meant that people who should have been subject to monitoring and control by the imposition of penalty points had avoided this.

He said: 'The penalty-point system has two aspects. The obvious one is that it puts bad drivers off the road for a period of time. The other one is that it is a wake-up call to many.

'We all know of motorists whose driving habits are transformed when points are added to their licences through fear of the consequences of further offending.'

The judge also alluded to the impact that Patel had on insurance companies.

He said: 'Bad drivers pose a higher risk than good ones. One of the effects of your offending was that insurers were carrying risks at an inappropriate cost, insuring bad drivers as if they were good ones.'

Patel's solicitor, Harriett Benson, a partner at East London firm Henscott, said her client had expressed great remorse for his actions. She said she will be reviewing the matter with her client and considering whether to appeal the sentence.

Matthew Woodford, a partner at Midlands firm Browne Jacobson, who had no involvement with the case, said: ‘The imposition of a prison sentence for a relatively minor instance of bribery shows very clearly that the act will not just be used against big corporates and sends a powerful message to individuals and smaller businesses.

‘If businesses have not yet put in place suitable procedures to ensure compliance with the act, then this case should serve as a reminder as to why they need to do so. The threat of unlimited corporate fines and prison for employees is very real.’