DPP to consider criminal charges in wake of alleged Positive Action fraud

The Director of Public Prosecutions will consider criminal charges before the end of the year relating to an alleged fraud at the Positive Action charity.

The Garda inquiry and resultant case file is now complete and will be sent to the DPP as early as this week for consideration.

Senior sources said gardaí will recommend criminal charges are pursued against the chief suspect.

There is only one suspect in the inquiry into misspending at the support group for women who contracted the hepatitis C virus from contaminated Anti-D Immunoglobulin. The infected substance was manufactured or distributed by the Irish Blood Transfusion Service to 1994.

The Irish Times understands the fraud suspect has given full co-operation to the inquiry, including giving a number of statements without the need to be arrested. Sources familiar with the case said the statements by the suspect coupled with the evidence gathered by detectives who have studied the organisation’s funding make criminal charges inevitable.

Six-figure sum

The criminal investigation has established a six-figure sum of money disappeared over a lengthy period of time.

Following the commencement of a HSE audit spending patterns became a Garda matter about one year ago.

As well as the sums of money allegedly taken, several suspected cases of inflated or bogus receipts and invoices being generated for the purpose of fraudulently taking money from Positive Action’s resources are also being examined.

A complaint over a “suspected fraud of funds” led the HSE to cease funding the organisation in March and it has since gone into liquidation.

Positive Action, which has been in operation for 20 years, had 727 members at the time the HSE withdrew its funding. It had debts of €107,000 when it went into liquidation in April.

The HSE audit resulted in an extended report in which some unusual spending emerged which is not the subject of a Garda investigation. It found Positive Action paid the husband of one of the members of its executive €2,350 for singing on at least four occasions in 2010 and 2011, while an executive member’s daughter received at least €2,750 for providing therapies over a three-year period.

The group also “front-loaded” company credit cards which were used to pay for restaurants, groceries, flowers, a €70 tyre and “bills made out to family members”. There were also clamping and parking fines of as much as €680.

‘Front-loaded’

The audit found that three company credit cards were “front-loaded” with amounts ranging from €8,000 to €10,000 totalling €68,000 between 2009 and 2013.

The audit team found that almost €34,000 on restaurants and take-outs was charged in the four-year period covered by the audit.

It highlighted spending on items such as foreign travel, gifts, cards and band hire, which were first reported by The Irish Times in March 2012.