Councilsleft with£13m billby master of fraud

A COMPLEX fraud which left Yorkshire council tax payers with a bill of 13.6m was carried out as part of an “empire building” conspiracy masterminded by the respected head of a local authority trading standards unit.

Three men involved in the scam were yesterday given suspended sentences and ordered to pay back the cash they made.

Businessmen William Whitehead, Paul Liggins and David Abbott were due to stand trial for conspiracy to commit false accounting but changed their pleas to guilty at the last minute.

The fraud at South Yorkshire Trading Standards Unit, known as SYTSU, lasted almost five years, undetected by Sheffield Council auditors who were responsible for checking the accounts.

It was run by the unit head Mike Buckley, who was globally renowned as an expert in his field, and who, Sheffield Crown Court heard, was motivated by his vanity, in a bid to make himself look more successful.

The scale of the scheme only became clear after his death. The unit was paid for jointly by Sheffield, Doncaster, Barnsley and Rotherham Councils, and when the fraud was uncovered they were left with the 13.6m liability.

It is understood senior representatives from each of the four authorities will now meet to discuss in detail how the fraud happened and to what extent each council will meet the massive bill.

Buckley had a reputation as an international expert in metrology, the science of calibrating weighing equipment, but Lynn Griffin, prosecuting, said he had in fact been running SYTSU dishonestly.

An investigation after his death in 2005 revealed he had “embarked on a course of conduct which was directed towards his own personal aggrandisement”.

She said he was “empire building” and used deals with Whitehead, Liggins and Abbott to make false representations about his unit’s income to make himself look successful.

Buckley set up agreements with the three defendants to supply falsely inflated invoices to SYTSU relating to the supply of calibration equipment.

Buckley paid the invoices from SYTSU cash but then conspired with the defendants in an arrangement which saw them pay an invoice raised by his unit for non-existent “calibration work”.

Under this deal each defendant effectively immediately returned some of the money which Buckley had paid them, allowing him to pass off recirculated cash as legitimate income.

After Buckley’s scheme was fully unearthed, Sheffield Council was left with a shortfall of 5,970,000 and the other three councils were presented with liabilities of 7,630,000 between them.

Barristers for each of the three defendants said they were ashamed of what had happened and had initially trusted Buckley and his reputation when he asked them to produce “unusual” invoices.

Sentencing the men, Judge John Bullimore said: “The four local authorities have suffered very serious financial losses running into many millions of pounds. All of them could have found much more useful ways of using the money.”

All three men were sentenced to 12 months in jail suspended for two years and were each ordered to pay 10,000 costs.

Abbott, 62, of Waterthorpe Grove, Sheffield, was ordered to repay 47,795 to Sheffield Council and told to do 120 hours unpaid work. The court heard he had already repaid some of the money.

Whitehead, 63, of Mansfield Road, Heath, Chesterfield, will pay back 153,074 and do 240 hours of unpaid work, while Liggins, 55, of Elwes Way, Northampton, will repay 84,102 and do200 hours of unpaid work.

Master manipulator: Page 7.