Liberal Democrats: “Who cares if we’ve lost £3million?”
The Liberal Democrat Leader of Lambeth Council has shrugged of the massive £3M fraud scandal that engulfed the Council this week. Speaking on BBC Radio, Lib Dem Cllr Peter Truesdale told a shocked BBC interviewer that losing £3M was ‘”not so much money in the scheme of things”. In fact, the £3M stolen from the Lib Dem council is the same amount as ALL the council tax paid by 3,000 households in Lambeth over the past year. The Council has been in crisis since it was revealed that Liberal Democrat bosses let a fraudster get away with £3million of Council money because they failed to run proper criminal record checks on him or his fake company. New revelations this week show that when Liberal Democrat bosses realised they were being stung they FAILED to call the Police immediately but instead merely SUSPENDED the fraudster - alerting him to the fact that he’d been rumbled. He quickly closed the fake bank account and fled with the money, possibly abroad. He has not been seen since and Police fear the money may never be recovered. Councillor Truesdale was unable to refer to any action plan to guarantee that further fraud is not taking place in the Council. The Leader of Lambeth’s Labour Opposition, Cllr Steve Reed said: “Lambeth Council is now in crisis. The Lib Dems are trying to claim that one of the biggest frauds in local government history doesn’t matter. That losing £3million because they didn’t carry out basic security checks is not a problem. “Well, 3,000 families in Lambeth are sickened to learn that the Lib Dems have lost every penny of council tax they paid over the last year – and then just turned around and shrugged their shoulders.” Listen to the BBC interview here part
one - part two.
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