News about investigations into potential corruption at Auckland Transport is certainly not good.
Auckland Transport has called on external investigators to guide its inquiry into serious allegations of corruption over roading contracts.
The council organisation has stood down a senior manager on indefinite leave during the inquiry, which it was previously conducting in-house while promising to call in the Serious Fraud Office if it could find evidence of wrongdoing.
But chief executive David Warburton said today it had now called for “external forensic accounting advice” from consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers into the road maintenance area of its business.
The accountancy giant is also separately investigating allegations about irregularities over infrastructure contracts at KiwiRail, after being called in by the state-owned company, although no officials have been stood down by that organisation.
Dr Warburton said Auckland Transport was completing the initial phase of its investigation, and the external advice had been sought in parallel with an internal review of procurement procedures.
He could not indicate how long the review might take but said the organisation would continue to keep the SFO and the Office of the Auditor-General informed about any progress.
The manager remained on indefinite leave while the matter was being dealt with “to ensure the integrity and independence of the investigation is maintained.”
The SFO confirmed last week that it has spoken to both Auckland Transport and to KiwiRail about their respective investigations, and that both organisations had undertaken to advise it if they found evidence of potential fraud.
While I’m sure that this is not a nice time for anyone involved and while the claims are concerning, I must say that I think AT are handling the process well, especially as they appear to be being upfront about what is happening. That is a far cry from what they usually do where they try to pretend that nothing is wrong- admittedly usually much less serious situation. Hopefully AT will have this whole issued sorted out soon.
Note: I don’t think it’s a good idea to speculate on the situation until we know more.
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Personally I think comments should be switched off for this one.
Yes I did think about that. I only left them on to discuss the comms aspect but if anyone starts making stupid comments I will delete them and lock the commenting (let that be a warning to you all)
I give it half an hour 😛
Pleasantly surprised to be wrong!
Senior transport officials doing dirty business with road building companies? Quelle surprise.
stupid comment?
Both nzherald stories I’ve seen also mention KiwiRail, any comms from them?
Well I’ve only seen what is in the herald too so someone must have reached out (or leaked) the details.
Perhaps the KR one is about charge out rates for LEs and locos?
I think it’s a great sign and is positive proof that NZ companies and organisations do take the issue of corruption seriously. There are some clever cookies out there who go to great lengths to cover their tracks but, if corruption is suspected, all a company or organisation can do is investigate. Internal processes can be worked around. To harass them (AT / KR in this case) because of the investigation is unfair. I would be congratulating both KR and AT for taking decisive action even if ultimately there is no case to answer.
the wheels of justice do move slowly here, there was a fraud case related to streetworks at NSCC where the SFO laid charges back in 2010 and it went to trial only a couple of months ago
A terrible pity, for all involved. Let’s hope AT is a robust organisation and comes through this strongly.
Corruption. That can hardly come as a surprise to anyone can it? Do we seriously believe companys such as Fulton hogan and fletcher get their jobs because they are good or especially qualified?
we had tunneldiggers here from Norway. Thats right Norway the worlds most expensive country where employees earn five times what they do in NZ. They enjoyed their tunnelwork, eanred double what they used to (as far as I could understand they were on about 18.000 NZ dollars a month instead of their usual 9.000…
They enjoyed the pubs and single handedly made the Scandinavian pub evenings free and full of life.
AT are advertising for a new CFO in today’s paper “due to the appointment of the incumbent CFO to a local council”. Hope the new broom can sort this mess out and put in place better auditing of contracts.