Taxes in Richmond have gone up more than 17 per cent the past three years. At the same time, burdened taxpayers have unknowingly been paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for gift cards.
Further review of documents Global News obtained under a freedom of information (FOI) request for 2019 through 2021 reveals taxpayers bought hundreds of dollars’ worth of IKEA gift cards, Vanilla Visa prepaid cards and Mastercards.
Some receipts have notations, such as “prizes,” “goals and accomplishments,” “team building,” “no sick time taken,” “prizes for Halloween,” and “take our kids to work day volunteer appreciation.
The city claims an initial review suggests they followed procedures in place at that time.
“The question is whether people were essentially paying for things for themselves using gift cards to try and hide the trail that they were using taxpayers’ money for, to spend on things for themselves,” said Duff Conacher with Democracy Watch.
Richmond is justifying the use of taxpayer dollars to buy cards for Lululemon, Cineplex, Netflix, Fairmont Hotels and Petro Canada, saying some were for the United Way fundraising campaign.
It admits that $295,000 worth of cards are unaccounted for in 2022 through 2024, after a previous Global News FOI investigation.
One email contained in the thousand-plus pages of documents shows an order for $23,000 worth of restaurant gift cards.
It was ordered in 2020 by the executive assistant to the city’s previous chief administrative officer.
One person has been fired, and a criminal investigation is active and ongoing, according to the RCMP.
The city won’t reveal the status of a forensic audit, which is examining 10 years of gift card purchases by taxpayers.