Economic crime
 

The government gave me a task today. Let's just call it an espionage mission.
A rather hard one...therefore, I seek help.

Before I begin, I need to explain some things first.
The government has a sub-department that deals with the technologies (support, delivery, hardware etc). This is where the hardcore programming guys are, with an IT-director on top. Let's call it IT-department.

Basically, we give them money, and they provide us with the systems.
Lately, they've been recruiting a lot of people and my boss is wondering where they're getting the money from. Because he know the amount of money he has given them for this period is not going to cover all the new recruits.
So now he's suspicious and wants to know if the IT-director is really listening up all the income and outcome on the State Budget.


My job is to somehow find out where they get their money from without letting them know it. Asking the person who's responsibility for the economy for the IT-department is useless, since he's siding with them.

I don't know much about economic crime (not sure if I'm using the right term), this is the first time I'm doing this and I'm clueless. My boss wants me to give him suggestions on how to find out their budget without blowing the "cover" or whatever that I'm doing.
The goverment is of course giving me all the access I need.
I feel like Solid Snake or Sam Fisher.

Any suggestions?
All I can come up for now is that they have found a company that gives them hardware that are cheaper than the company that is listed up in the contract.

Your post makes very little sense. By government, do you mean the actual government or just the management of whatever company you work for?

If you're talking about the actual government and you say this is the first time you've ever done this I call bullshit because every government department, no matter how small will have either an internal audit team or access to external auditors who would be able to sort this out very quickly and easily.

Anyway, most likely scenario is that they're purchasing off contract or they're teeming and lading, using money designated for one supplier to pay off another and so on. Either sounds implausible though because only a proper fuckwit would perpetrate that kind of fraud to hire more employees, they'd only ever do it for personal gain and to pocket the spare cash.

Explain yourself better, preferably in English this time.

^ What Shin said.

But ignoring the alarming level of nonsense and bullshit, here's a crazy thought, you go to the boss of this 'IT-department' and ask.

Hey guys, don't make fun now, he's on a mission from God the Government.

Sooo... You are telling us there is no audit trail to track? And now you need to trace a new audit trail? On top of that, you need to give us more info on your "government" or "business" or...

There is ONE possibility I can come up with, but I want you to say it first. If you say it first, I'll tell you what we do.

Edit: Okay, two possibilities, but they are one in the same. Just one possibility is legal, the other is illegal.

Get the head of IT, strap him to a chair and get the cattle prod out? If you do it the right way your cover won't be blown because there's no way in hell he'll be willing to say anything against you from that point on. Let me give you a hint:

Testicles.