[MSN] Currency caper at Bank of Canada leaves cash till short

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*Currency caper at Bank of Canada leaves cash till short*
*By DEAN BEEBY*

OTTAWA (CP) - Someone has helped themselves to a few choice specimens 
from the Bank of Canada's currency museum, newly released documents show.

Red-faced bank officials are short about $16,700 following the unsolved 
theft at the central bank's popular tourist attraction.

"There is no plausible explanation for the discrepancy other than 
theft," says an internal audit obtained by The Canadian Press under the 
Access to Information Act.

"The procedures for note holdings should have been stronger . . . some 
of the procedures that did exist were not followed."

The missing money came not from the display cases, but disappeared from 
a stash of cash the museum uses to help teach visitors about counterfeit 
currency.

The so-called note exchange program allowed patrons to swap their 
old-style bills for new-series money with special security features 
designed to thwart counterfeiters. The popular program, created in 2001, 
has been abruptly cancelled in the wake of the currency caper.

Bank officials first noticed money was missing in June last year, but 
took five months to complete an audit and call in the Ottawa police, 
internal documents show.

Asked why the process took so long, bank spokesman Christian Vezeau said 
only that "we conducted a thorough internal investigation through which 
we were able to rule out any accounting errors and we concluded that the 
money was stolen."

Det. Tracey Turpin of the Ottawa police said the case is now considered 
closed, partly because the bank complained long after the alleged theft.

"A lot of time had passed and just about everybody that had worked at 
the time had moved on," Turpin said in an interview. "To track who was 
working when, when the money would have gone missing, was virtually 
impossible."

The police did not conduct any interviews. But the Bank of Canada's own 
investigation suggested it was an inside job because the money went 
missing in an area accessible only to employees, Turpin said.

Vezeau declined to say whether any staff members have been disciplined 
or fired, citing privacy rules.

He added: "The procedures in place for the storage, handling and regular 
counting of the money for the boutique till were further tightened when 
the museum became aware of the shortage."

The currency museum, which attracts 35,000 visitors a year, is nestled 
inside the original 1934 Bank of Canada building, which itself is 
embedded inside the bank's modern glass-and-steel towers near Parliament 
Hill.

Opened in 1980, the modest facility costs about $1.5 million a year to 
operate, with 20 full-time staff. There's no admission charge and guided 
tours are free. The galleries feature coins and currency from around the 
world, with an emphasis on Canadian money.

The internal audit, dated November last year, noted that "high staff 
turnover" was partly responsible for the lax security that apparently 
allowed the theft. "Management oversight in such an environment should 
have been stronger," it said.

The heist at headquarters is not the first time the central bank - which 
prides itself on tight security - has seen its assets go AWOL.

In 2004, a bank employee was fired and charged with theft after $10,000 
was stolen from a Toronto bank-note facility, where large bundles of 
cash are received from chartered banks.

And in 2001, the central bank lost track of $1 million worth of $1,000 
notes at an Ottawa-area shredding facility. An exhaustive internal 
investigation found that "misappropriation of bank notes cannot be 
conclusively ruled out," and a new security camera system was installed.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/