A HIGH-flying manager has been jailed for lying to police about speeding on the Alresford bypass.

Michael Owen, 45, was twice caught speeding and spun an elaborate web of lies to avoid paying fines.

Owen, who earns £84,000 a year, has now been jailed for two months after pleading guilty to perverting the course of justice. His career is now in ruins as he will be sacked from his high-flying post.

Winchester Crown Court heard that Owen, a vehicle finance manager, of Princes Drive, Alton, was captured on camera in July 2007 speeding at 89mph on his Kawasaki motorbike on the A31 near Bentley.

When the police sent him a penalty notice, he forged a letter from his landlord saying he had moved to his holiday home on Cyprus. The police traced him there, but Owen got his maintenance man to tell them he had “gone away”.

When the police stopped tracing him, Owen was emboldened to pull the same trick in August 2008, when on the A31 Alresford bypass, he was clocked doing 88mph.

But he confessed to police last December and was charged with perverting justice.

The court heard that in 2007 Owen’s marriage was under stress and that he had cycled from Paris to Basingstoke for charity, and that his father was dying from cancer.

But sentencing, Judge Jeremy Burford QC said the offences were too serious to avoid immediate prison sentence. He also disqualified him from driving for a year.