Fraudsters and public servants using work credit cards for personal spending have added more than $150,000 to bills for the government's largest departments and agencies.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
A Fairfax analysis of credit card figures from departmental officials shows the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Bureau of Meteorology had the highest rate of credit card spending that broke agency rules in 2016.
In other departments, staff used credit cards to pay for private travel, accounting courses, or personal bills in spending that officials described as inadvertent.
Cases of card misuse included:
- A fraudster who tried to spend $1300 using weather bureau card details
- An Able Seaman who repaid more than $7000 after a misspend
- A Foreign Affairs department employee sacked after spending $9000
More than $20 for each staff credit card at the weather bureau and the Bureau of Statistics went towards spending that broke policy, a figure the Bureau of Meteorology said reflected efforts by external fraudsters to sting the agency.
A weather bureau spokesman said most of the 18 inappropriate purchases, totalling $5688, related to external fraud by people or entities outside of the agency last year.
"The remainder of purchases involved expenses that were not for goods or services for the Bureau of Meteorology such as private expenditure," he said.
"All external fraudulent activity was refunded by the financial institutions concerned. All costs incurred as a result of accidental misuse have been refunded by the staff members concerned."
The ABS had 156 cases of inappropriate spending, reaching a total value of $56,000, the highest amongst large departments and agencies in 2016 where data was available.
A bureau spokesman said 82 of the purchases were made for legitimate business purposes but were not made through mandated travel suppliers, and the remaining 74 totalling $1,915 were instances where the expenditure did not relate directly to official business of the ABS.
About 70 per cent of cases related to purchases that could have been made through whole-of-Australian government arrangements for travel and stationery, a Health spokeswoman said.
"This can occur as a result of the good or service being unavailable through these arrangements at the time of the transaction where there has been an issue with the WOAG supplier," she said.
Defence, which has drawn fire from the national auditor for its staff's credit card misuse, racked up $35,500 in spending found to be either illegitimate or against department policy.
The largest misspend of $7100 by an Able Seaman was repaid in full.
But Defence had a lower rate of misuse than others because of the number of cards issued to its public servants and military staff, totalling 106,000 cards, including 29,931 fuel cards.
The Immigration Department topped $18,000 in spending over 484 transactions deemed to be credit card misuse, although a spokeswoman said this was 0.2 per cent of the total number of transactions and 0.02 per cent of its total credit card spending.
"There were no established cases of fraudulent activity on corporate credit card by employees," the spokeswoman said.
"The vast majority of the inappropriate purchases were travel-related meals and incidentals paid on corporate credit cards which had previously been reimbursed by way of travel allowance.
"All the inappropriate purchases were either refunded by the merchants to the same corporate credit card, or repaid by the cardholders."
Immigration's largest inappropriate purchase of $1070 was for a CPA Australia course, however the department said the employee immediately realised they had used the wrong credit card and contacted the business for a refund.
Fairfax reported last week that among figures released by departments, DFAT revealed it had sacked an employee after detecting $9000 in inappropriate credit card spending.
Comment has been sought from Defence.
