Can you believe Corporate Travel?
The company's 'rogue trader' defence doesn't add up.
The slow-moving train wreck formerly known as Corporate Travel Management Limited inched closer to the ravine this week, with the sobering revelation it systematically defrauded the UK Government not to the tune of £78 million ($147 million) since 2021, as originally disclosed, but instead by £118 million since 2019.
In round numbers, that means that the company's entire cumulative profits – and then some – between July 2019 and December 2024 were the product of fraud and deception. While there have been bigger financial disasters, Corporate Travel's grand theft takes the cake for audacity.
Shaking down the UK Government once is risky business. Doing it in broad daylight over a period of several years to prop up the rest of Corporate Travel – which was clearly rotten to the core – takes an especially big pair of balls.
Like all major corporate disasters, the Corporate Travel imbroglio necessitates the rewriting of history and blame-shifting to protect reputations and, if truly successful, to turn the heads of regulators in an alternative direction. Great dollops of contrition and remediation are served up in the hope of diverting attention from what really went on. It is too early to tell yet whether or not Corporate Travel's diversion plan – reframing the narrative writ large – will be successful in avoiding consequences.
