Former leader of Nottingham City Council Jon Collins has issued a statement after the local authority was found to have acted unlawfully.
On Wednesday, December 15, a legal notice was issued to the City Council after more than £15m which was supposed to go into its Housing Revenue Account, which is used for council homes and tenants, was instead used in its General Fund.
That fund is used for day-to-day services, such as bin collections, and in the case of emergency one-off payments.
And that amount has built up since the financial year of 2014/15, which led to current leader Councillor David Mellen to apologise for the blunder.
Speaking to Nottinghamshire Live, former leader Jon Collins, who was in charge of the local authority when the wrong payments started, said the process was never questioned.
He said: "Any decision that was taken at the time would have been on the advice of the finance officer and, bearing in mind, we are talking about something that by all accounts was something that went through the budget process from 2014/15 onwards.
"It would have been recommended by the head of finance and approved by head of legal and been through the executive, so all the executive councillors would have supported it, it then went to full council so all the councillors would have voted for it and it then went through the district audit, the internal audit and then the external auditors.
"In terms of process nobody ever questioned whether it was or wasn't an appropriate thing to do.
"Not that I'm aware of.
"Obviously if someone had raised a concern that would have been considered at the time."
Mr Collins is currently reportedly earning £1k a day to chair nuclear waste meetings, examining plans to build a nuclear waste storage site off the Lincolnshire Coast.
Councillor Graham Chapman, who, during the reign of Jon Collins, controlled the authority's purse strings, said: "I really do not think it is sensible to say anything.
"All I can say is that whatever decision was done was done under legal advice."
Current leader Councillor David Mellen previously said the money would be refunded into that account as soon as possible.
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