MoD received £211bn worth of suspicious invoices in three years

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has rejected more than £211bn worth of suspicious invoices in the past three years as part of a broader effort to tighten financial oversight and reduce the risk of fraud.

According to data obtained via a Freedom of Information (FOI) request and analysed by the Parliament Street think tank, the MoD blocked 8,918 invoices totalling £211.6bn between 2022 and 2025.

Just over half — 5,063 — were later corrected and resubmitted successfully by suppliers. The remaining 3,855 were permanently rejected.

Reasons cited for the rejections included invalid tax information, incorrect pricing, missing supplier details, duplicate invoice numbers, and use of inactive purchase orders.

The figures come in the wake of two high-profile fraud cases involving former MoD personnel.

In April 2025, ex-corporal Aaron Stelmach-Purdie was sentenced to prison for defrauding the MoD of £911,677 through fraudulent expense claims submitted via an internal online platform. The court heard that he retained over £550,000 for personal use.

In a separate case in June, army financial administrator Andrew Oakes was found to have stolen more than £300,000 by issuing cheques to himself while falsifying stubs to make them appear as payments to legitimate vendors.

The funds were used to purchase multiple vehicles, including three Teslas and a Mini Cooper.

Commenting on the findings, Jason Kurtz, CEO of invoicing platform Basware, said:

“These figures expose the huge volumes of invoice fraud and errors facing government departments on a daily basis. When fraud is suspected, we’ll often see major fluctuations in billing figures, especially if the criminal thinks they can cheat the system using stolen data such as cloned email addresses and bank details.”

Kurtz added that the burden on finance teams is not only in detecting fraud but also in managing the administrative fallout:

“The massive workload associated with investigating and rejecting incomplete or fake invoices is a huge drain on resources. That’s why it’s vital that AI-based verification is deployed, to ensure all invoices are accurate before they enter the payments system.”

Dr Janet Bastiman, chief data scientist at Napier AI, said the public sector remains a prime target for criminal groups due to the volume of transactions and breadth of supplier relationships involved.

“Invoice fraud is a key tactic used by criminals to divert legitimate payments into rogue bank accounts,” she said. “Large government organisations tasked with managing thousands of transactions every day from multiple suppliers are a top target for malicious parties seeking to extract funds using fake paperwork to fuel money laundering, organised crime, and illicit activities.

“Key to neutralising these threats is to deploy AI-powered financial crime detection tools to track and identify anomalies that could be suspicious transactions, allowing public sector decision makers to spot illegal activity and take immediate action.”

The MoD has not publicly commented on the FOI figures, but the volume of rejected invoices underscores the scale of the administrative challenge facing public sector finance teams amid rising scrutiny over fraud controls and public spending discipline.