£500k swindler’s spending spree

Flights, hotels and expensive computers were part of a lavish spending spree by an IT boss who swindled £500,000 from the National Library of Scotland.

The Sunday Post can today reveal for the first time full details of the goods bought by rogue NLS manager David Dinham on taxpayer-funded credit cards issued by the National Library.

The records show how the 35-year-old, from Edinburgh, spent tens of thousands of pounds with big retailers like Amazon, John Lewis and travel firm lastminute.com.

The spending binge netted Dinham a £1,100 Apple computer, a £3,500 Sony monitor, digital cameras and a £200 set of Bose headphones. The IT specialist also spent £600 on a subscription to a website offering discount hotels in North America.

Dinham was jailed for two years in 2011 after admitting embezzling £500,000 from the public purse and was released last year.

Around £150,000 was clawed back at the time the fraud was uncovered and NLS bosses have a court order to try to recoup the rest of the cash from Dinham’s future earnings.

Scottish Conservative chief whip John Lamont said: “It’s clear from this list that the individual used public money to live a life of luxury for some time.

“This confirms the sheriff was correct not to be fooled by lawyer pleas for him to be spared jail. There’s no excuse for this level of theft, and I’m glad the organisation is beginning to make inroads into recouping the money.

“At least, from this scandal, safeguards seem to have been put in place to stop it ever being repeated.”

Files released under freedom of information laws show a total of £314,000 worth of credit card transactions which NLS identified as fraudulent.

This included £33,000 spent at John Lewis and more than £15,000 on the Amazon website, where Dinham bought guide books to India, digital cameras and a raft of IT consumables.

A separate purchase saw the IT manager who had control over major budgets at the historic institution buy a TomTom satellite navigational device along with maps of the USA and Canada for it.

The rest of the £500,000 fraud was accounted for by forged supplier invoices issued to the NLS.

At his court hearing it was revealed that when first spoken to by the police, Dinham, who grew up in Australia, said the transactions were for “personal purchases”.

Defence agent Duncan Hughes said Dinham, who has degrees in IT and accounting, had struggled with depression and low self-worth.

A NLS spokesman said: “This fraud was committed by senior manager and budget holder David Dinham, who had a detailed knowledge of internal processes and procedures.

“Credit card statements were falsified and supplier invoices were forged to present personal purchases as legitimate business items.

“The crime was detected by our internal systems which resulted in a police investigation and the individual concerned being charged.

“Internal processes were reviewed as a result of the fraud and controls on the use of credit cards were strengthened.”

In what is thought to be a first for Scotland’s public sector, the spokesman added that NLS is to start publishing all credit card transactions over £500 on its website from next month.