A WASTE worker has been busted handing out commercial garbage bags to a restaurant in exchange for free food and wine.

Westminster City Council said its employee, who has not been named, was suspended and banned from working with them.

Analysis from the council’s Corporate Anti-Fraud Service (CAFS) said it lost over £6,100 from the restaurant in Victoria since it stopped purchasing the bags in May 2018.

The liners, which cost £68 for a pack of 50, are used by businesses for rubbish left on the street for collection, according to a report by the city council.

It said: “CAFS received an email allegation via their ‘report a fraud’ mailbox, which suggested that an employee had been supplying a restaurant in Victoria with free commercial waste bags in exchange for free meals and sometimes wine.

“The bags supplied in this area could only come from the waste contractors based at the Mandela Way site.”

This had, it said, “…provided CAFS with a smaller pool of suspects from the contractor’s operatives. Within this reduced number, the description provided matched only one operative.”

The council released its half-yearly fraud report which showed investigators identified a £488,000 of fraud between April 1 and September 30 this year.

This included an employee caught “moonlighting” for the council while working full-time with an engineering consultancy.

The firm, which has also not been named, notified the council after the employee accidentally sent his colleagues at the company an email using his council account.

When he was confronted the employee denied the claims but resigned.

CAFS later found that he had sent four emails to the engineering firm using his council account and had been working both jobs for six months.

Among the evidence was an email congratulating colleagues at the firm for delivering a contract, while the other included a fee proposal signed off with a job title and email address matching the firm’s.

The report said: “Open-source checks then identified an article published by the consultants detailing how an expert has joined their leadership team.

“That expert was our employee.

“The report states what an exciting time it is for the consultancy organisation to have recruited this person.”

It added: “The investigation also revealed his own consultancy business, which he had not disclosed.

“He was suspended immediately, pending disciplinary action, but resigned shortly afterwards.”