The head of the Chattanooga office tasked with finding fraud and theft in local government issued a 47-page rebuttal Tuesday to a recent state report alleging that the city’s Office of Internal Audit failed to cooperate in a theft investigation.
In a report released last week, Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury staff alleged that three electricians working for the Chattanooga Division of Transportation stole about $80,000 in overtime pay for work they had not performed in years leading up to 2021.
Comptroller staff also said in a later section of the report that the Chattanooga Office of Internal Audit did not work with the state on the investigation. Specifically, according to the report, the office failed to tell the state about the allegation of fraud soon enough, didn’t disclose updates to the investigation on time and refused to cooperate with the state’s investigators.
The claims about the audit office are false, City Auditor Stan Sewell said in his rebuttal. They are also defamatory, he said, and he requested a retraction.
“There is no foundation, under any acceptable standards of investigation, for the misleading and false reporting,” the rebuttal said. “This raises the question of intent and motive for such defamatory reporting.”