Employees in D.C.’s finance office helped themselves to thousands of dollars from an emergency cash fund that was supposed to help city workers, The Examiner has learned.
Three employees, including a high-ranking finance official, have been fired in the wake of the scandal, sources familiar with an ongoing investigation said.
Employees were helping themselves to petty cash from boxes around the city, the sources said. They were also keeping cash and checks from payments back into the fund to cover themselves in case their drawers were short, the sources said.
The allegations are detailed in a report from D.C. Auditor Deborah Nichols that is still being drafted. The city’s inspector general is also investigating, sources said.
It’s another blow to D.C. Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi, whose credibility has been shaken after federal authorities charged two low-level employees with filching tens of millions of public dollars from the city’s tax office. On Thursday, Nichols released a separate audit accusing Gandhi’s staff of overpaying a favored consulting firm to the tune of millions of public dollars.
Nichols discovered that frontline cashiers were paying themselves up to thousands of dollars at a time, and then slipping personal checks into the city’s cash boxes as emergency IOUs, sources said. The money was supposed to help city workers whose paychecks had been fouled up. Payouts were supposed to be capped at $250 unless the city treasurer approved higher disbursements.
The finance office employees were giving themselves up to $2,000 at a time, according to sources.
City workers who draw from the cash advance fund are then supposed to pay the money back when their checks are fixed. Nichols’ team found evidence that finance office employees were pocketing those payments, too. In a single box, Nichols’ team found $26,000 in cash and checks that were supposed to have been deposited or returned to workers.
It’s not clear how extensive the damage was to city coffers. Records are scattershot, and the cash advance program didn’t have internal controls to spot trouble, the sources said.
The finance office tried to downplay the significance of the scandal. City Associate Treasurer Emma Chappell told The Examiner that she had ordered a review of the cashiers’ offices months before Nichols began sniffing around. She said her review was put aside
after the tax scandal became public.
Finance officials are now working feverishly to automate and centralize their cashier system, Chappell said.
“We’re taking it very seriously,” she said. “I don’t think anything like this would occur again.”
Nichols’ report is expected within weeks.
Got a tip on the finance office? Call Bill Myers at 202-459-4956 or e-mail [email protected].
