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Liberal legacy: New audit revelation - Liberal gov’t Justice Dep’t staff fraud and dishonesty

This is yet another Liberal government legacy.  I’m going to have to catalogue them I think. 

This one is from the department you’d think would be monitoring and controlling this kind of thing.  No no no.  Turns out they were complicit in this kind of thing.

Vote liberal.

Justice travel tabs soar

FEDERAL JUSTICE Department employees have played fast and loose with travel and hospitality rules and cost taxpayers a bundle, an internal audit reveals.

The report, completed in March 2005 but just released publicly on the department’s website last week, uncovered sweeping problems, including shoddy documentation, mixing personal and business trips on the public dime and flying business class instead of economy in violation of the rules. Weak control measures have left the department vulnerable to unauthorized spending, non-compliance to the rules, unjustified or fraudulent claims and excessive expenses, the report found.

Citing a number of “gaps and weaknesses” in the department, the report blames some breaches on ignorance. But other violations stem from a blatant disregard for federal policy or deliberate abuse of the rules, the audit said.

The team of bean-counters dug up one case it referred to the RCMP, which led to a charge of theft over $5,000 for fraudulent claims. The employee was fired and the full amount owed was recouped by the Crown, according to the report.

In four of 331 claims reviewed in the two-year fiscal period between 2002 and 2004, auditors found travellers had combined business travel with pleasure, with the public on the hook for personal expenses such as meals and ground transportation.
 
Adam Taylor, research director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, called the audit a “slap in the face” to taxpayers in the wake of the public outrage over lavish expense claims by ex-privacy commissioner George Radwanski.

[…] In 2002-2003, the department racked up $13.3 million in travel expenses and another $900,000 in hospitality, while the following year the department kept the travel tab to $6.9 million and hospitality to $400,000. […]

 

Joel Johannesen
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