<…> costs have ballooned from around £19 million to a projected estimate of £131 million and, because the council chose not to use system audit features, it cannot tell if fraud has taken place on its multibillion-pound spending budget for an 18-month period.
Sounds like fraud was the goal.
Yeah… whenever there’s a “detect fraud” feature and someone chooses not to enable it… it’s because they plan to defraud.