What £211bn in suspicious invoices teaches us about finance controls

Government data released by Freedom of Information shows the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) rejected 8,918 suspicious invoices worth £211.65 billion between 2022 and 2025, as flagged by the Parliament Street think tank.

These rejections reflect issues from invalid tax details to duplicate invoice numbers and inactive purchase orders. Over 5,000 invoices were corrected and resubmitted but 3,855 were permanently rejected, underscoring the scale of misbilling attempts. High-profile fraud cases involving military personnel earlier in 2025 — including one officer stealing nearly £1 million through expense claims and another misappropriating over £300,000 via falsified cheques — have added political and operational pressure.

Risks for finance and AP teams

Finance professionals — especially in payables, treasury and vendor management — face heightened exposure:

• increased false positives from high-volume invoice screening drains resources
• risk that genuine invoices may be delayed, straining vendor relationships
• internal fraud via expense platforms or administrative roles may go undetected
• manual processes struggle under scale, creating audit, compliance and reputation risk

These challenges deepen existing operational burdens within high-risk procurement environments like defense and public sector finance. To stay ahead of these risks, finance teams need tools that can provide real-time visibility and reduce manual intervention.

How Eftsure reduces these risks

Eftsure helps finance teams strengthen controls across the vendor lifecycle:

• vendor validation verifies identity and active legal status before onboarding
• invoice and payment verification flags mismatches in real time against purchase orders
• transaction monitoring detects anomalies like duplicate invoice numbers or inactive POs
• seamless integration with AP systems minimises manual triage and accelerates resolution

By catching suspicious invoices before settlement and reducing rework, Eftsure enables teams to focus investigations more strategically without disrupting genuine vendor payments.

Guidance for finance leaders

Finance leaders at public or private organisations with complex vendor networks should consider:

1. strengthening vendor onboarding with identity and compliance checks
2. deploying automated invoice-validation tools to cross-check invoices against POs
3. using anomaly detection (AI-based if possible) to raise flags on suspicious patterns
4. scaling transaction monitoring to spot internal fraud early
5. training AP and treasury staff to review AI-identified risks with structured processes 

These measures help rebuild trust in financial operations and reduce both administrative burden and fraud exposure.

MoD’s experience in rejecting £211 billion of questionable invoices offers a stark reminder: systematic risk requires proactive vulnerability management, not reactive fixes. Eftsure provides that proactive layer — verifying vendors, monitoring invoices and protecting payments before harm occurs.

Ready to reinforce your team’s financial resilience? Book a demo with Eftsure.