ChooseCBR businesses probed over 'unusual or suspicious patterns'

Businesses were investigated in an audit over a range of "unusual or suspicious patterns", which included redeeming vouchers outside of business hours and for having a small number of customers redeem large amounts of vouchers.

The ACT government audited 33 businesses, following the December trial of the scheme, documents released under freedom of information showed.

As part of the audit, one business did not respond to requests for receipts, another said they no longer had receipts and others did not provide all of the information requested from the government.

Only three businesses were banned from taking part in the second rollout of the voucher scheme.

It comes after revelations that the ACT government was warned about the potential for financial fraud in the scheme's ICT system and that there were "limited mechanisms" to monitor the risk.

ACT Business Minister Tara Cheyne revealed in the Legislative Assembly last month that there was a pattern of questionable transactions across three businesses, which were banned from last month's full rollout.

The freedom of information documents, obtained by the ACT's opposition, revealed the three restaurants had the same director.

Transactions at the restaurants raised eyebrows after the audit found that a large number of customers used their vouchers every day at the restaurants.

But many of these customers did not use their vouchers at any other business.

Under the trial of the scheme, customers were given four vouchers to use daily - however, they could only use one voucher per business per day and each of the vouchers were a different amount.

The audit found that customers consistently used the same voucher amounts at each of the three restaurants.

"There is no obvious reason why customers would spend significantly smaller amounts at one of these businesses than another," the audit said.

"When contacted about this pattern, the merchant advised that it was the result of friends and family support their business.

"However, it does not appear plausible that customers would spend more than $140 per day purchasing meals at these businesses."

The director did not provide any further explanation for the questionable transactions totaling $5335 and was subsequently banned from the full rollout.

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The ACT government also revealed that some participating businesses were able to breach the terms and conditions of the program and redeem the vouchers outside of business hours.

Under the terms and conditions of the program, vouchers had to be redeemed at the time of the transaction.

The trial's audit investigated businesses where a bulk of their vouchers were redeemed outside of regular trading hours.

Following the audit, businesses that did this were contacted and "were reminded of their obligations under terms and conditions" but no further action was taken.

However, in last month's rollout thousands of dollars of vouchers were redeemed in the early hours of one Saturday morning.

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An ACT government spokeswoman said businesses were given exemptions for a variety of reasons, including tills being busy, the system being down and the fact staff were unaware of the program operation at the time of transaction.

"Despite not being in strict adherence with the ChooseCBR terms and conditions or the guidance material provided, a practice throughout the ChooseCBR trial and the program's full rollout was for businesses to write down voucher codes at the point of sale and redeem them at a later time," the spokeswoman said.

The controversial scheme was rolled out in June, with the government providing $2 million of subsidised vouchers for people to spend at participating Canberra businesses.

The $2 million was spent in three days, with more than $1.6 million claimed in just one day.

It followed a three-week December trial of the scheme where $500,000 was allocated, but only $310,000 was claimed in the trial.

The government conducted spot checks during the June rollout and have so far requested information from 25 businesses.

An independent review of the program will also be conducted.

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