“'Due Diligence'..? What's that?”

A pregnant council officer has been jailed for two years for stealing £110,000 and sending much of the money to her mother in Nigeria.

Bintu Tijani, 35, a children's services manager for Peterborough City Council, drew up fake invoices to steal 10% of her department's annual budget.

She doesn’t appear to have been exactly a model employee in other respects:

He said she was caught by council fraud investigators following her suspension from work on an unrelated matter in October 2007.

Tijani, responsible for an annual budget of £1.2m for child support strategy, was sacked a month later and the evidence was passed to police.

Ah, well, can’t be helped, really. I mean, how could the council know that they were employing a thief? Oh, wait:

She got the job at the council in May 2004, despite having disclosed a criminal conviction from 10 years earlier for credit card fraud.

So, she disclosed a criminal conviction for fraud, yet the council gave her a £1.2m budget to run…?

Epic fail, Peterborough council!

Still, it’s only taxpayers’ money, after all.