Whistleblowers have been commended as the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (Ibac) reveals that senior public servants in Victoria concealed losses estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars due to flawed Covid-19 business support payments.
Investigation Findings
During the pandemic, the Victorian government allocated approximately $257 million in support grants to around 9,000 ineligible businesses. The Ibac report indicates that senior officials within the department responsible for these payments deliberately obscured the extent of the losses from their superiors.
“"This was not a one-off event, nor was it due to an oversight," the report states. "Decisions were made to withhold information about the magnitude of the loss and misleading information was subsequently created and disseminated over an extended period of time."
The findings were tabled in parliament on Thursday as part of the Operation Harmonia special report, which scrutinized the actions of officers in the now-defunct Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions.
Context of the Cover-Up
The investigation highlighted that by mid-2021, the department was aware of potential issues regarding its use of GST as a metric for assessing eligibility. As the true scale of the losses became apparent—suspected to be as high as $285 million—the associate secretary and deputy secretary chose to withhold this information from their superiors.
