Bachop at 'centre of' other issues

The Deloitte report into a more than $1.5 million fraud at the Dunedin City Council revealed it went beyond the sale of 152 council-owned vehicles.

The report said it appeared former Citifleet team leader Brent Bachop was at the ''centre of'' five other potential issues.

It found Mr Bachop spent $102,908 on a card - about a quarter of the total spending on the card, which could also be used to pay for vehicle maintenance and servicing - on miscellaneous items, including soft drinks, chips, milk, chocolate biscuits, bread and fuel for personal vehicles.

Dunedin City Council chief executive Sue Bidrose said the council no longer had all-service fuel cards, and only a few cards could be used to buy limited other items.

All other fuel card expenditure had been checked and no discrepancies found.

Mr Bachop used council funds to buy a $7333 Suzuki trail bike in 2008, apparently for personal use. Deloitte found he used a fictitious registration number and altered values to cover it up in the council's asset register.

There was a question about $104,800 in cash cheques written by the council between December 6, 2010, and December 30, 2011, to refill pay stations at the council's Moray Pl car park.

Deloitte could find no evidence the cash was used to refill the pay stations.

It noted the process used to be done by a third-party security specialist, until Mr Bachop changed the process.

Each request for cash was approved by Mr Bachop, who also cashed the cheques, although he would sometimes not provide the full amount of cash requested.

It was not possible to ascertain whether Mr Bachop kept a portion of the cash himself, and Deloitte noted the practice was stopped shortly after the process was challenged.

A former staff member told Deloitte that he saw Mr Bachop, on at least one occasion, replace worn parts on his own cars with less worn parts from council vehicles.

There was also some inappropriate use of coun-cil vehicles for private purposes, although details of whom that pertained to had been largely redacted.

Mr Bachop's council credit card spending over his period of employment was assessed, but no spending of an obviously personal nature was identified.

 

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