“There is a lack of accuracy in the management of the maps,” criticized the city’s auditor general, Véronique Boily, when presenting her annual report at a press conference on Wednesday morning.

Credit card usage has exploded in the city of Laval: $1.1 million in expenses were charged to 84 cards in 2022, compared to $80,000 ten years earlier, an increase reported by M^Me Boily cites the increasing popularity of online retail, especially since the pandemic.

To this amount we must add 2.1 million in gasoline costs paid with 457 credit cards for such purchases, mainly for the police and fire departments.

Significant amounts which, in the auditor’s opinion, are not always the subject of a thorough analysis.

The police “paid more than $17,000 in late payment interest on fuel card balances from 2020 to 2022 without taking the situation into account,” the annual report said.

For the same service, “reported and unexplained exceptions include out-of-province purchases, including one in Alberta, followed by an Ontario purchase less than 24 hours apart.” “The City has not implemented fuel card spending monitoring activities based on this “aim to identify and correct inefficiencies and inconsistencies,” the document states.

In three cases, more than 90 liters of gasoline were paid for with the card, even though it was a vehicle whose tank only held 72 liters, noted M^Me Boily.

Other inconsistencies: 60 purchases of premium gasoline using a card linked to a vehicle that uses regular gasoline, and three consecutive purchases of more than 30 liters of fuel two minutes apart using the same card.

The auditor’s office analyzed 25 gasoline transactions and found that only 64 percent of them had receipts.

The police department has issued a policy regulating the use of fuel cards, but the planned controls are too burdensome and costly given the large volume of transactions (more than 20,000 in 2021 and 2022), the report says.

The auditor also found deficiencies in the control of unauthorized expenditure. “In the case of unauthorized spending totaling more than $1,000, it took the city more than five months to conclude that these were transactions without apparent compensation,” she complains. In another situation, receipts for transactions valued at $3,420 charged to a credit card had not been obtained nearly a year after the purchase date. »

In general, Véronique Boily is concerned that only 67% of the recommendations contained in her report four years ago have been implemented in various areas.

“Whether it is the management of credit cards, fuel cards, the reimbursement of expenses for municipal employees or the implementation of recommendations from previous years, the Auditor General’s conclusions point to significant significant deficiencies in good governance on the part of the government.” public administration,” reacted the leader of the opposition Parti Laval, Claude Larochelle, in a press release.