Since its renationalisation last October, the allegations of fraud directed at Southeastern Railway have more than doubled in scale. The total amount of money wrongly claimed by the train operating company stands at a staggering £64 million—resulting in a £23.5 million fine announced at the end of last month.
The penalty notice for the fine confirmed at least thirteen years of irregularities going back to the foundation of Southeastern. Rail privatisation is notoriously complex, and this complexity was allegedly exploited by the company to defraud the public purse of tens of millions of pounds.
In 2007, Southeastern discovered that they could easily manipulate the system and hide public subsidies meant for the maintenance of trains. They escalated the scam in 2014, when through various sleights of hand, they falsely retained vast amounts of HS1 subsidy that should have been returned to the taxpayer. After being found out by civil servants in March 2020, Southeastern continued to actively conceal their accounting history until…
