I’d like to share my story. Around 35 years ago, I was the undereducated, under-scrutinised clerk class 5 enabler of a fraud on the Commonwealth by a slick new divisional CEO of a large and fundamentally well-ordered department, one of the social services ones.
This character indulged himself in the same misdeeds, more or less, as departed ASIC deputy chair Daniel Crennan, scamming relocation expenses.
I’d never seen one of these exotic claims before. As nerdy as I was on the technocratic details and business principles of so much of the cyclical and business critical services produced by the Personnel section, I didn’t question any of it or reach out for guidance, and some corporate memory was on hand if I’d thought to ask.
I checked my own work, as we’d recently retrained the entire team on orders from head office.
The CEO’s expense claim landed on my desk. Being unfamiliar material I probably let it drift a day or two then processed the claim and used the delegation entrusted in a 20 year old to authorise the payment. Ours was a deadline driven operation and we knew from both the Auditor-General and Public Service Board our outfit was near best-in-class.
Stretching travel allowance claims, it was unexceptional for us patrol those and make sure mini-bar perks were pushed back onto the employee.
Knowing absolutely nothing about the parameters of this novel allowance I naturally assumed this olden day version of Shifty Shipton was claiming all he was entitled to and nothing dodgy. There was a unit named Personnel Practices back in Canberra; I didn't check in
If the Personnel Manager or the clerk class 10 in charge of management services held suspicions I never heard a thing. Doubt they did, it was my job to handle this and they would only have spoken up if I’d missed the payment run.
I was a young journalist on the Financial Review in Sydney when the Federal Police summonsed me for an interview, as one memo from me to the CEO on what he was being paid and what he was entitled to (as if I knew) was evidence in the case they were building against this person.
I couldn’t remember a thing about it and the investigators basically told me what it was that I remembered for my statement.
What followed; I have no idea. If the person at the heart of this story is still alive and wants a right reply please get in touch.