An investigation into Dunedin City Council's missing fleet vehicles has found long-standing team leader Brent Bachop apparently responsible for more than $1.5 million of fraud.
Dunedin mayor Dave Cull. Photo: RNZ / Ian Telfer
A Deloitte report released this afternoon has detailed how he transferred vehicles to his name and sold them on, including some to fellow staff and councillors from from October 2003 to February 2014 involving 152 vehicles.
In May this year, the South Island council called in Deloitte to find out how many vehicles it actually owned in its Citifleet and Citipark departments and in August contacted police.
The transactions included deposits of $349,000 he made that were most likely from the sale of the cars. The report said many other sales were cash transactions.
Fuel cards were also used to make a minimum of $102,908 worth of purchases at petrol stations.
Deloitte found the total loss to the council was $1,586,380.
Mr Bachop died suddenly in May. A police investigation is continuing.
Dunedin mayor Dave Cull told Checkpoint he was confident that the council had sorted the problem.
"Deloitte's review has identified control failures - lamentable ones, appalling ones - and anything that was detected, anything any of those control failures that were identified are either being dealt with or have been dealt with now."
Listen to Dave Cull