Summary: The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’, or the company robbing me and my colleagues behind our backs, started the fraud weeks or months after the company’s accountant had suddenly left (though maybe it predates this); instead a bunch of fraudsters took over, engaging in embezzlement that wasn’t confirmed to us until this year (and only after long and persistent pursuits, as Standard Life was stalling and stonewalling for 3 months)

MY articles from December already quite extensively covered the dodgy accounting at Sirius. I’ve heard references to such conduct (“sophisticated” or “smooth” criminals), coming from people who were long involved in the company. This is a company that pretends its address is in fact the address of an accountant or accounting firm. The CEO who fled the company (scene of the crime) last month had done the same with his own company. These aren’t people of integrity, they’re immoral imposters who barely ever use Free software (they (mis)use the brand “Open Source” mostly for marketing and recruitment).

As noted here back in December, the company had been violating the law for years by not sending payslips, rarely sending them, or only sending some after a lot of nagging/reminders.

Who was doing the accounting anyway? One theory is that the company was passing the data to some external (the above-mentioned) people to sign off, without actually auditing or verifying anything. That might explain them ‘failing’ to check that for many employees the money wasn’t at all being sent to pensions as specified in over 60 payslips (per employee). Serious ‘failure’! This went on for over half a decade. This was definitely not an accident, hence the scare quotes around the word failure.

In the E-mails below (redacted for privacy) one can see the allusion to the manager explaining the accounting, rather than actual accountants doing the accounting, dealing with accounts. The messages were sent to and by a notoriously reckless, lazy employee (with almost zero technical skills) who forgot to arrange for coverage (colleagues were left alone at night!). Many such blunders happened without her facing consequences. There were good reasons for this person being strongly loathed among many staff. There’s the lying about looking for cover, the failure to actually provide cover (for holidays), among many other failures….

If that’s not bad enough, she was also bullying staff and by the looks of it (or on the face of it) participating in pension fraud, in effect robbing the people she was bullying. If she can be proven to have been culpable in the “pensiongate” (as a Personal Assistant), she might be sentenced to prison.

Anyway, shown in bold below is the part suggesting that accounting at Sirius was done improperly by people not qualified to do so (and when mistakes were made, innocent staff paid the price).

——– Forwarded Message ——–
Subject: September Salary
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2020 22:11:11 +0100
From: ????????? ?????????
To: ????????? ?????????

Hi ?????????,

I hope you are well. I have just checked the salary and it looks to me like the payroll only counts 7 shifts instead of 8 shifts for this month. Could you please check up on this when you are less busy?

Many thanks,

?????????

---

——– Forwarded Message ——–
Subject: Re: September Salary
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2020 17:23:51 +0100
From: ?????????? ????????
To: ?????? ??????????????????

Hi ?????????,

Thanks for getting back to me, but this is still not clear enough to me because on the months of June and July (both months) I got 8 shifts and I was paid £850.71, whereas now (for the month of September) I was paid £784.93, so there is a huge difference. If you can send me the payslip, at least I will see deductions, so that will help.

Br,

?????????

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——– Forwarded Message ——–
Subject: Re: September Salary
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2020 09:35:02 +0100
From: ?????????? ?????????
To: ??????? ??????

Hi ????????,

Do you have the payslips available now? If possible, I would like to have the payslips from January 2020 up to date. They’re needed for legal reasons.

Regards,

---

Hi ?????????,

Just spoke with [CEO]. It seems you were over paid last month, so it was deducted from this month. I will arrange for your payslips to be sent to you on Monday.

Kind Regards,

????????? ?????????

---

——– Forwarded Message ——–
Subject: Re: September Salary
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2020 12:25:33 +0100
From: ?????? ????????
To: ??????? ????????

Hi ???????,

Thanks for sending the payslips. I have reconciled the things which [were] not clear to me in the first place. In my understanding, I wasn’t overpaid on the month of August it [is] just that the accountant or whoever [is] doing the payroll didn’t deduct the necessary stuff that they are supposed to do (that’s their job) [and] because of “their” mistake I was penalized; If I didn’t see the payslip I wouldn’t know it. Anyway, thank you everything now is clear.

Best,

---

The key part above is, the reference point isn’t accountants but the CEO. If the CEO does the accounting (he is no accountant) or overlooks all this, then it is ripe for great abuse. A potential perpetrator can never be entrusted as his/her own bookkeeper.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 14th, 2023 at 3:16 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.