Crippling financial debt led a Portuguese father of two to kill himself after being jailed for embezzlement.

Antonio Carvalho, 50, was found hanged in his Shirley home on August 2, 2009, after his ex-wife, worried she could not get hold of him, called the police.

The former financial controller had become depressed after he failed to purchase the hotel in which he worked.

His former employers decided to sell it to a higher bidder.

In a desperate attempt to get back at his employers Mr Carvalho stole £40,000 from the company but was found out almost immediately and sent to prison.

On his release he suffered from severe depression and struggled with crippling credit card debts, one of which he owed £35,000.

His ex-wife, Linda Carvalho, said he had been suffering from depression and at the request of her sons, she was trying to help him through it.

Mrs Carvalho said: “He was an honest person, one minute he had everything and nothing the next.

Although the former couple hadn't spoken in years she said: “The boys asked me to help him so I was trying to help him.”

“He was very depressed, I tried to pull him out of it. He was a very proud man, he used to get upset in front of me and I was sympathetic but I was trying to look at the good points.

“I told him he had two sons who adored him and told him to look at the people who were losing their sons in the war, he said they were better off dead.

“I was absolutely devastated, to my dying day I'll feel terrible, I didn't think he'd ever do it.

“He was frightened of the police because he had been arrested, I told him if he didn't answer the phone I'd call the police.”

Coroner Roy Palmer said: “The method used leaves me in no doubt he intended to die by his actions.”