Re Diamond Versi. Note to File
At 10.30 a.m. on Friday, 20th December I met with Stephen Dexter and Mark Steer of Grant Thornton at their offices to air a concern.
The previous day was the day of the staff party. For the Bursary staff this begins with drinks and presents at 11, followed by the Christmas lunch in Hall from noon. Diamond usually participates fully in these events (including moving on from lunch to drinks in the pub), but this year he did not come to the Bursary drinks and after lunch returned to his desk, where he worked all afternoon. At about 4 p.m. I dropped in to his office to ask what he was doing. He said he was just checking some items on the accounting system (the Accurate Solutions main menu was on his screen). I asked what in particular. He said he was looking at some payroll items because sometimes mistakes occurred. When I asked for more details he said he had been checking his own pay.
I did not press my enquiries, wished him a Happy Christmas and returned to my office. About an hour later he called in to my office to ask whether I knew of any major invoices coming through, because we had about £800,000 on the current account and he thought it might be worth putting the bulk of it on a time deposit over the break. I said that sounded sensible.
My concern was that what Diamond was actually doing that afternoon was not what he said he was doing. The grounds for my concern were that
1. It was unusual behaviour - he is normally a very active participant in festivities.
2. The reason he gave for being at his desk was not convincing, and he declined to put it in context.
3. His later query about the surplus funds was very strange - it is the first time he has ever asked me about the management of our surplus cash, and there would in any case be no question of a material invoice being presented for immediate payment the day before we closed for the holidays - it seemed to me to be an attempt at a justification for his presence in the office.
4. Diamond seems to have been spending quite a lot of money this year. A few months ago he bought a new BMW. Over the Christmas break he and his wife are going to Sri Lanka for a fortnight's holiday.
This was not the first occasion on which I had questioned Diamond about what he was doing and received a less than convincing answer. When going through the audit letter's recommendations a few weeks ago I queried the need for the accounting package (Accurate Solutions) to be accessible from outside the College (it can be accessed by the software house and by Diamond). He said he occasionally needed to check things. I asked what. He said it sometimes occurred to him on the way home that something might have been mis-posted.
Stephen Dexter's response was to agree that from what I had said there was cause for concern, and that we should take measure to establish either that the concern was groundless, or that something was amiss. We therefore agreed that Mark Steer, a forensic accountant, would come in on 2nd January to look at the recent history of postings to the accounting system (the Accounts Department being closed til 6th Jan).
To do this we needed to have the relevant passwords, and in fact Stephen Dexter suggested that we ought as part of our risk management practices to hold the passwords of senior staff. As Diamond was leaving the Warden's drinks party at about noon on that Friday I asked him if he would let me have his passwords - I explained that the issue of the college having access to the passwords of senior staff had been raised at an EBC Risk Committee and I had meant to ask him earlier. He asked Julie Hernandez to accompany him to the Bursary to get the passwords so I said he could either leave them on my desk or with Julie. When I got back to my desk I could not find any note with the passwords. My Secretary phoned Diamond at home but there was no answer, so she phoned Julie, who said she had given all the passwords to Diamond. I therefore asked the IT officer whether he had access to Diamond's password. He did not, but was able to change the password, which would mean that Diamond would no longer have access. The password was changed. I also, as an extra precaution, instructed the IT Officer to close the Accurate Solutions system to external access.
RJB 23-12-02