Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Carillion chief ‘ignored’ crisis Board minutes reveal bombshell
A BLACK hole in Carillion’s contracts was spotted by a “whistleblower” nearly a year ago, company documents reveal.
It happened when Emma Mercer returned to the UK from working for the firm in Canada to become finance chief of its construction services arm last March.
Minutes from a Carillion board meeting last May show that within six weeks she had identified issues she was “not comfortable with”.
Her concerns related to two big building contracts where costs had spiralled.
Mercer brought it up with Richard Howson, Carillion’s boss at the time – then took the matter to the head of human resources. The minutes said Mercer “appeared to be a whistleblower who did not feel she was listened to”. Two months later Carillion announced an £845million hole in its finances and Howson quit. Mercer later became chief finance director.
The meeting documents also revealed Zafar Khan, Carillion’s finance chief at the time, told the board there had been “incompetence and laziness” in the accounting of key contracts. Yet KPMG, Carillion’s auditor for 19 years and criticised over the saga, was involved in a later review.
Frank Field, chair of the Work and Pensions Committee probing the collapse, said: “Emma Mercer took just six weeks to spot and pull the thread that began the entire company unravelling.
“That the next Chief Financial Officer had to go through whistleblowing procedures to get her concerns about accounting irregularities taken seriously by the Carillion board is extraordinary.”