Financial Irregularities
The chief executive of the PDC was John Collinson, former property director of the Black Country Development Corporation. He was suspended from his post in June 1995—and he resigned in September—after it was reported by the Public Accounts Committee that he had spent over £9,000 of the corporation's money on his own private expenses during visits abroad, though he did repay the money.
The committee also censured the corporation for "poor stewardship of public funds" and said that it had "lost control over the expenditure of public funds". However one of the companies that had been criticised by the Public Accounts Committee complained that its report contained errors and not all the evidence had not been considered. Following this, the National Audit Office, which had provided much of the evidence for the report, admitted that some of the involved parties had not been spoken to directly. Following a spell during which David Woodhall was acting chief executive, Collinson was formally replaced in early 1996 by Geoff Timbrell who had been the head of property at the London Docklands Development Corporation.
Read more about this topic: Plymouth Development Corporation
Famous quotes containing the word financial:
“Because of these convictions, I made a personal decision in the 1964 Presidential campaign to make education a fundamental issue and to put it high on the nation’s agenda. I proposed to act on my belief that regardless of a family’s financial condition, education should be available to every child in the United States—as much education as he could absorb.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)