A MAJOR fraud investigation has been launched by City of York Council.

Councillors on the urgency committee are being asked to approve additional resources to pay for extra staff to carry out investigative work.

News of the probe comes only weeks after the council issued a stern warning to would-be benefits fraudsters that they would be caught and punished.

Details of the investigation are being kept under close wraps, with a number of senior councillors declining to comment after being approached by the Evening Press.

But the authority said today that it was not related to either council officers or councillors.

It is understood that the council is being assisted in its inquiries by a number of other agencies, including the police.

Simon Wiles, the council's director of resources, said in a statement today that the council had started to undertake a "significant" fraud investigation, and found it needed extra "investigation staff to carry out the work."

He said the report to the committee, which meets on Wednesday, sought councillors' approval for the relevant expenditure, and also for the updating of some job titles in the constitution which were changed when the Resources Directorate was reorganised.

The committee agenda says councillors are being asked to approve small changes to the council's policy and procedures governing investigative work.

Mr Wiles said: "It can be confirmed that the fraud under investigation relates not just to the council, and is not related to council staff or councillors."

He added that details of the investigation would be released to the media when it was complete.

Last month, Max Thomas, the authority's head of audit and fraud investigation, spoke out after the successful prosecution of a city benefits cheat convicted of claiming more than £17,000 to which he was not entitled.

"We will not tolerate fraud of the benefit system and the council has an excellent record of bringing false claims to justice," he said.

In 2001, council fraud investigators and police detectives brought about the downfall of York landlord Geoffrey Laverack, jailed for 30 months for cheating the taxpayer out of tens of thousands of pounds.

At the time, the three-year investigation was believed to be one of the biggest ever mounted in the country.

Updated: 10:44 Monday, August 16, 2004