A Rochdale (England) council worker has been jailed for diverting £80,000 of public money to himself and his friends. He was eventually caught after an internal investigation found he had altered banking and addresses of businesses to make fraudulent transfers, but had used his work email address and computer. Among the transfers were payments in relief funds to a company whose records showed had dissolved in 2014. Payments were also made to friends posing as businesses. Where were the council’s PO and invoice verification procedures, their internal control process, one wonders. Read the full article in the Daily Mail here.
The Annual Fraud Indicator 2017 finds the annual cost of fraud in the UK is as high as £190 billion (both private and public sector), with the public sector accounting to just over £40 billion of that. It highlights that Procurement is most vulnerable to fraud in the shape of false invoices or contracts awarded for bribes. It puts this down to the sheer size and volume of expenditure it accounts for, and a high volume of low-value transactions.