MAVERICK tax investigator Michael Allcock, who destroyed a successful career by his greed for the high life, was jailed for five years at the Old Bailey yesterday for taking bribes.

But the sentence on the most senior taxman to be convicted of corruption was attacked by some MPs who said it was too lenient.

Mr Toby Jessel, Conservative MP for Twickenham, said: ''The sentence for this type of offence should be exemplary.

''I think the Inland Revenue themselves would want to uphold the highest standards and would expect a sentence so severe that no-one else would risk that kind of corrupt behaviour.

''This is a disappointingly modest sentence.''

Lady Olga Maitland, Tory MP for Sutton and Cheam, said: ''This demonstrates that white-collar crime can pay.

''If you commit a white-collar crime, you stand a good chance of getting away with a lighter penalty.''

But Judge Peter Beaumont had emphasised the sentence should serve as a warning to any other public servant tempted to take bribes.

''The public expects and is entitled to expect its servants to be incorruptible. That they are is in part maintained by the knowledge that when public servants are found to fall below those standards, it is met with instant imprisonment,'' he said.

Allcock, 47, from Colchester, Essex, was convicted of six charges of corruption on Tuesday but cleared of five others. He faced a maximum of seven years in jail on each charge.

His corruption has shaken Inland Revenue to its 300-year-old foundations. He had taken ''breathtaking'' bribes, including a holiday of a lifetime to the United States, a cruise to Bermuda, the services of call girl Michelle Corrigan, 30, and cash payments totalling #150,000.

The former head of Inland Revenue's investigations unit, Special Office 2, showed no emotion as the judge told him he had been destroyed by his own greed.

''Your corrupt behaviour has cast a long shadow which I cannot ignore. It has called into question the careers of others. It has threatened the integrity of the service itself.

''You are a man of marked ability, drive, and with a determination to succeed,'' the judge added.

''The sadness of your case is that the evidence makes it equally clear that had you the will to do so, you could have prospered in a career in the Inland Revenue which had begun so promisingly.

''You hadn't got that will. It was destroyed by greed for a style of life and the trappings of success which went with money, far, far beyond that which you earned.''

Allcock was convicted of accepting the services of Miss Corrigan as a bribe from a man he had investigated, Iraqi-born oil consultant Hisham Alwan.

Alwan, 57, from Knightsbridge, London, who was convicted of a single charge of corruption - paying for Allcock's first sex session with Miss Corrigan - was given a nine-month suspended sentence.