Probe into crime funds

Starting next week, Chris Swinson is to look at how the Drugs Trafficking Confiscation Fund and Criminal Offences Confiscation Fund are administered amid claims that they are being used as backdoor funding for ordinary States expenditure. Meanwhile, figures released to States Members on Tuesday detailing how the funds had been spent are being redrafted after the JEP pointed out some glaring omissions. Missing from the data, for example, was the £67,000 boat bought by Customs in 1998, and subsequently sold by them six years later for £28,000. The JEP believes that the figures understated the expenditure on the DTCF by £400,000 or more. The Treasury official who compiled the figures is understood not to have realised that he was missing extensive paperwork, especially from the DTCF, which is chaired by his boss, States Treasurer Ian Black. The updated figures are now being double-checked to ensure that they represent a true picture of how much has been spent and on what.