A number of book keeping irregularities brought to light by an internal inquiry reveal that for months hundreds of Maltese liri in cash have been disappearing from the St Paul’s Bay local council’s office maltastar reported last night.

But neither the local councils’ department, nor Paul Bugeja, the locality’s mayor, have yet reported the case to the police, the Labour website said.

The inquiry was launched two months ago after a number of cheques that should have been deposited in the local council’s bank accounts, were found in a clerk’s drawer. But the investigation opened a can of worms. At least Lm1,200 in cash paid to the council for permits to use cranes and other machinery in public roads disappeared between September 2006 and March 2007, the period covered by the internal probe. At the same time, a number of receipts for similar cash payments were not found, while others were mislaid, or without a serial number.

The inquiry board is made up of two Nationalist councillors and one Labour councillor. On 19 June, the board decided to ask the Local Councils’ Department to bring in the police. In a memo to the mayor, the board said,” Due to the complexity of the case, we are recommending that the matter should be investigated by the competent authorities.”

The Department requested the councillors to continue investigating themselves by interviewing the clerk. But it was clear that this was not a matter of just one employee – the investigation found missing money for the months of September and October 2006, when the clerk had nothing to do with the processing of the permit applications. Moreover, the cheques were found in a drawer that was accessible to any other person inside the council’s office.

For some reason or another, the mayor kept insisting that the inquiry should only go back to November 2006, which meant focusing on the work of just one clerk. But the inquiry board rejected this. And as more files were opened, more irregularities were uncovered.

The missing cash amounts to Lm102 for September, Lm401 for October, Lm54 for November, Lm164 for December, Lm158 for January, Lm191 for February, and Lm170 for March. The files of the other months have not yet been checked.