We have highlighted a story in iNews Cayman today re a Virginian Governor, Bob McDonnell who has been accused of misuse of a state credit card.

Sounds familiar doesn’t it?

Our ex-premier McKeeva Bush is also facing similar charges except he used it at casinos.

I wonder what his church ministers think about that?

Interestingly quite a few people I have spoken to feel it is a trivial offence to use someone else’s credit card for their own use. They don’t look at it as stealing. Especially if the money is paid back.

However, that is not how it works.

If I was to let you have $10,000 cash for you, my employee, to use for the company’s benefit on a trip and found you had in fact used the majority of it at casinos, I would be very angry. My employee would be sacked and I would file charges against him. I bet you would too.

Using my piece of plastic is no different to using my cash.

Another surprising fact is the media have rarely covered the problem.

Bush has said in his defence that many Legislative Assembly members and senior civil servants have done the same thing.

That seems to make it right in his book. “The Law According to McKeeva.”

As you can see, however, he is not alone in this belief.

In a study executed by Angela Morelock & Bryan Wright – Partner and Senior Manager, BKD, LLP they have found the following:

The misuse or abuse of a company-issued credit card can occur among employees at any level, but certain spending habits and patterns have emerged, typical of two particular groups.

The first is comprised of upper management who may sometimes view corporate plastic as a perk of their high-ranking position. Few purchases may be considered off limits by this first group because it often has access to cards that have no dollar limit on what may be purchased. Though members of this group generally don’t try to hide their charges, it’s not uncommon to find managers who charge thousands of dollars in personal or sometimes questionable items to their corporate credit card.

The second group tends not to abuse its corporate plastic on a regular basis. For example, while using a company credit card to purchase snacks for the office, members of this group might also toss a few personal grocery items into the cart that are intended for personal use, or they may occasionally buy dinner for their families and document it as a business expense.

This kind of misuse can make it difficult for companies to differentiate between personal and business purchases when the monthly statement arrives. If you confront members of group two, they may claim the charges were an accident, offer to pay the company back or attempt to explain how the charge had a strictly business purpose.

It’s also not uncommon for employees to buy things with a company credit card that they want for the office but don’t really need—the latest laptop computer or extravagant decorations for the office are common examples. This is especially true if employees have reason to believe the boss rarely looks at the company’s credit card statements.

The negative effect on an organization when managers abuse company credit cards and act without integrity cannot be understated. The problem is not the spending itself, but rather the indifference toward ethics and integrity that often creeps into the minds of otherwise honest employees. For example, accountants and bookkeepers generally know when their boss is abusing the company credit card. Though many hesitate to do anything when they see their boss charging personal items to the company credit card, they will often tell their co-workers about such misdeeds. As word spreads through the office grapevine, it affects the company culture and can create an environment ripe for other types of fraud and abuse. The general attitude can quickly disintegrate into “if the boss can do it, so can I.”

So Bush and McDonnell you are setting a very unwelcome example. Aren’t you supposed to be “role models”?