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Transport for London has launched an investigation into one of its senior managers amid allegations that hundreds of thousands of pounds of TfL money has been improperly funnelled to a company in which he had a close personal interest.
Phil Pavitt, TfL's chief information officer, is under investigation after substantial numbers of staff were recently recruited to his department through a firm called Results International plc.
Some of the new staff are paid in excess of £1,000 a day, allegedly far more than their market value. Results International collects a commission on their salaries.
According to its website, Results International specialises in training and is not a recruitment agency. It is based in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, almost 100 miles from London. Several of those recruited also live in Leamington Spa or Coventry.
The Standard has established that Mr Pavitt, 46, was a non-executive director of Results International, but no longer holds the role. Until September this year, Companies House records show, he was director of another firm, F Cubed, which is based at Results International's offices.
Both Mr Pavitt's co-directors in F Cubed - Matthew Wright and Bharat Lakhani - have been employed on generous salaries in Mr Pavitt's department at TfL. Mr Wright is shown on Results International's website as a member of its management team. His partner, Melanie Wombwell, is the firm's managing director.
The man chosen by Mr Pavitt to be his chief of staff at TfL, Bill Morgan, is also understood to have worked for Results International.
"There is supposed to be quite a robust process by which staff and interims [temporary staff] are employed by TfL," said one TfL source. "The allegation is that that process was totally disregarded to get these people in. There is quite a lot of money at stake."
One senior TfL source described the allegations as "TfL's Lee Jasper affair". Mr Jasper, a senior aide to then Mayor, Ken Livingstone, was forced to resign earlier this year after a Standard investigation revealed large sums of public money had been paid to organisations controlled by him and his associates.
Mr Pavitt is described by TfL as a member of its "top-level structure". His department is responsible for TfL's entire IT operation, with a staff of 500 and a reported budget of £1billion.
Starting life as a debt collector for BT, Mr Pavitt rose swiftly to become IT director for NTL and Centrica before joining TfL last year. He was recently listed as one of Britain's top chief information officers.
The investigation, ordered by TfL's head of internal audit, Mary Hardy, has seen Mr Pavitt interviewed twice. However, it is understood that he has not been suspended.
Mr Pavitt, who lives in Benfleet, was unavailable for comment today. A friend said: "He believes this has been stirred up by people who are resistant to the changes he is trying to make inside TfL. He accepts the procedures [for recruitment] need to be tighter, but his view is that any failing was down to naivety rather than venality."
A TfL spokesman said: "We are already investigating this matter and will decide on the appropriate course of action once this work has been completed." Results International did not return calls.
