The Victorian corruption watchdog has found senior public servants covered up to $285m worth of payments to 9,000 ineligible businesses from the ministers responsible.
To qualify for the payments, businesses needed to be registered for GST. However, the new IBAC report found that in 2021-2022, public servants suspected that payments were made to businesses that had backdated their GST to qualify for support (ABC).
The investigation found that public servants within the department responsible for making those payments covered up the extent of the losses from their managers (The Guardian).
“Multiple failures to provide clear and accurate information occurred over a 10-month period from November 2021. This was not a one-off event, nor was it due to an oversight,” the report said (AFR).
The findings include an occasion in 2022 where after the auditor general opened an audit of the grants, the deputy secretary prepared a brief for then-minister and now-Premier Ben Carroll containing “false and misleading” information (The Guardian).