Employee nabbed for €78,000 travel expense scam

Bosses at agri-research body Teagasc failed to notice for 15 years that a worker had been filing weekly bogus travel expenses worth €77,636, it emerged today.

The employee was demoted and has since paid back the falsely claimed amount as well as an extra €52,420 in interest and penalties, the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee heard.

The State agency’s 2003 annual accounts also highlighted a conflict of interest situation which showed one centre paid out nearly €350,00 over nine years to a contract company which was half-owned by a Teagasc employee.

Comptroller & Auditor General John Purcell told the committee these issues showed “serious lapses in the corporate governance structure in the organisation”.

He said that the discovery of the false expense claims was not followed up satisfactorily and it cast doubt over the efficacy of the financial control environment at the unnamed Teagasc centre.

He said an anonymous letter had tipped off Teagasc HQ about the matter in 2001 but it wasn’t fully uncovered until an internal audit investigation in May 2003.

This probe revealed that a staff member had been claiming 112 miles a week that he never actually travelled.

Teagasc director Jim Flanagan said the issues before the committee were isolated incidents and were not the norm within the organisation.

He said the bogus expenses claims went undiscovered for 15 years because of a “culture of unwarranted trust in the integrity of some staff by certain managers” at the centre in question.

The director accepted that Teagasc may not have been as conscious about good governance in the past but it had since carried out stringent reviews to strengthen internal financial controls.

“We have learned quite a bit from these incidents,” he added.

In the conflict of interest incident, an unamed centre had outsourced a data-input service to a firm which was 50% owned by a Teagasc employee who was responsible for related work at the centre.

Mr Purcell found that there was no competitive tendering for the work, which was valued at €336,000 between 1995 and July 2004.

He said: “Here was an apparent laissez faire approach on the part of local management at the centre to compliance with ethical standards and financial control standards.”