Litany of fraud on public bodies revealed
● Audit Scotland says weak financial controls to blame for public sector scams
vehicles for cash payments.
The report for the last financial year also details six cases of fraud and irregularity around changing the bank details of suppliers amounting to £82,000; four cases of fraud involving income totalling £36,500; two cases involving payroll totalling £10,000 and three cases involving theft and totalling £45,000.
Of those, £12,000 was defrauded from Historic Environment Scotland when a corporate credit card was used to buy overseas events tickets before they were resold while £12,500 was stolen by a Perth and Kinross Council employee who sold refuse sacks and retained the cash and also kept refunds from council tax and rent accounts which had overpaid.
In the Western Isles, a care home employee who stole prescribed drugs from a locked medicine cabinet in a councilrun care home replaced them with paracetamol, while the owner of a council-funded care home in North Ayrshire embezzled £38,000 from residents and an occupational therapist who defrauded £8,000 from West Lothian Council by falsely claiming to be unfit for work, while establishing their own private business.
Other frauds included a council tenant sub-letting their home, the theft of school laptops valued at £7,000, and fundraising money totalling £1,200 being stolen by a school staff member in West Lothian.
Audit Scotland said its report’s aim was to help prevent similar circumstances happening again by sharing lessons learned across the public sector, and that not every case was provable fraud which would have warranted police action.
Butthewatchdogwarnspublic sector bodies to consider whether the “weaknesses in internal controls” shown in the report exist in their own organisations – and charges auditors to confirm whether controls “are sufficiently strong” to prevent similar frauds occurring.
The biggest case involved Scottish Water where four employees had used tankers to transport waste, without authorisation, for cash payments.
The misuse of the vehicles for the drivers’ personal gain was discovered when a member of the public called Scottish Water’s call centre to express his concerns regarding the employees’ activities. The concerns were also substantiated by a Scottish Water whistleblower and the four employees have left their employment as result.
Fiona Kordiak, director of Audit Services at the agency, said: “The level of fraud and irregularity we’ve outlined in this report is very small compared to the £44 billion that’s spent across Scotland’s public sector each year.
“That shows that systems to avoid fraud are generally working well.
“However, there were avoidable weaknesses in all the cases we’ve highlighted, and it’s important that all public bodies ensure that similar vulnerabilities don’t exist within their own organisations.”