Is this illegal?

[Diddums]

Purely hypothetical but something I've wondered for a while.

You're in charge of procurement at your company. You know suppliers and can get good prices for products.

Instead of simply ordering from them, you set up another company. That company purchased the products, and sells to your employer at profit.

Is this legal?

 

[platinum87]

Purely hypothetical but something I've wondered for a while.

You're in charge of procurement at your company. You know suppliers and can get good prices for products.

Instead of simply ordering from them, you set up another company. That company purchased the products, and sells to your employer at profit.

Is this legal?

This is what i do, it is perfectly legal

 

[MissChief]

Illegal? No. Almost certainly frowned upon and a potential to be fired from your company for conflict of interest? Yes. Especially if it results in your company charging more to your employer.

 

[sigma]

Pretty sure it'll be in your contract somewhere as a conflict of interest.

 

[Haggisman]

Illegal? No. Almost certainly frowned upon and a potential to be fired from your company for conflict of interest? Yes. Especially if it results in your company charging more to your employer.

Unless you are a politician, in which case its basically the done thing

 

[StriderX]

Jersey island company for max lol.

 

[deusexlumina]

Conflict of interest. Depends on the institution as to whether you can get away with it though.

 

[MooMoo444]

They’d sack if they found out probs

 

[peige]

Not illegal per say, just really iffy. Steering procurement for personal gain will almost certainly lead to being sacked.

 

[Hotwired]

Could be fraud if you're doing it without the knowledge of your company and for the sole reason to skim off the business expenses which you are in charge of.

Could be completely fine if the company is fully aware and there are reasons to do it other than padding your pay.

 

[Jimbeam3678]

I guess the company you work for, could be perfectly happy doing that in some scenarios.

For example you source a product via your own company from China which involves loads of red tape your employer doesn't want the hassle for so they are happy for your company facilitate it assuming you don't extract the urine!

 

[krooton]

We take annual ethics certifications for this, would get fired even if it isn't illegal

 

[Diddums]

Hmmmm.


Tricky one then. I suspect there are ways of doing this correctly, but I wouldn't want to mess my employer around, but I do love a bit of profit, so dunno really. It was something I could potentially have pursued but tbh it would take a lot more time and effort than I'd be willing to put in to it.

 

[Nasher]

Definitely not legal in the public sector. You would get seriously done for doing it there

 

[SpeedFreak]

You have identified a cheaper way to source these products but are withholding that information from your employer so that you can profit from it. I think it is pretty clear that this would be gross misconduct.

 

[dowie]

It is pretty unethical, as would be the slightly more common thing where office admin people/office managers get a back hander from suppliers/service providers etc...

I think you'd need to check your employment contract carefully, I know that mine required me to inform the company about any company director positions etc... there will often be a clause about other employment or business interests that overlap with your employer's etc... so if you lie about that stuff then extract money from them in this way perhaps it could constitute fraud. Especially if you are just reselling stuff at a mark up and your job as the person responsible for purchasing is to get good prices/save the company money.

 

[Psycho Sonny]

definitely a sackable offence.

Same as expense fraud and time sheet fraud imo. It is fraud.

You are employed by your employer to get items for the cheapest price possible. Otherwise I'm pretty sure anyone would be able to Google said product and buy from the first supplier which popped up. Your whole role is to get the cheapest price.

By setting up as a middle man you would be commuting fraud. You are basically diverting funds to your own pocket. Rather than the purpose they were designed for.

I'm sure if serious enough it would land you in prison and then say goodbye to any future jobs in a position of trust again.

 

[Diddums]

Ja that was my thinking too, but nothing asked is nothing gained. I can still source the product cheaply though so might sell it to others provided I can get all the right certifications in place.

 

[Rroff]

I'm sure if serious enough it would land you in prison and then say goodbye to any future jobs in a position of trust again.

A bit different but we had a cleaner doing this and I believe ended up in prison - had their own company acting as the supplier for some stuff they'd charge us full price and only buy the products in intermittently and just refill the bottles with some cheap nasty stuff in between while charging us for the full product and where they had to buy stuff through our supplier doing the same but selling on most of the normal product on ebay (how they got caught) through the supplier they'd setup as "excess cleaning products they'd bought too much of". Over the whole region they were probably making a fair bit.

 

[Craterloads]

Sounds like you want to scam your current employer...