Anthony O’Sullivan, 60, was suspended in 2013 over claims he gave himself a pay rise when other members of his staff had a wage freeze. But the Labour council boss carried on scooping his £137,000 annual chief executive’s salary despite not actually working for six-and-a-half years, the Mail Online reports. The row over his pay cost Caerphilly County Borough Council £4million having also saw 746 council workers lose their jobs due to a lack of funding.

An independent investigation was launched by the Welsh government and the council who found Mr O’Sullivan was “grossly negligent”.

But when cornered by the BBC, he refused to apologise.

He said: “I have nothing to apologise to anybody for.”

He added: “This is about this viscous, vilifying media campaign that has gone on for six years, where I’ve had no right of reply.

“There are two sides to every story – I have had no opportunity to present mine.”

The row started over claims Mr O’Sullivan, deputy Nigel Barnett and head of legal services Daniel Perkins authorised a 20 percent pay rise for senior staff.

Criminal charges were dropped in 2015 and the other two men agreed on payouts of £300,000 between them.

No agreement was made with Mr O’Sullivan who was put on suspended leave.

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He then continued to receive his salary.

Barbara Jones, council interim leader, said: “We regret the amount of time and money that has been spent on this matter, but we had no choice other than to follow the agreed statutory process.

“It should also be noted that during this time we had to allow criminal investigations to proceed, which added almost two-and-a-half years to the overall time frame.”

Jess Turner, of Unison Cymru, said the row should have been sorted out “years ago”.

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The union representative added: “Staff are absolutely sick of it and the council needs to move on.

“Since 2010, severe spending cuts driven from Westminster have cost the jobs of 746 Caerphilly council workers, yet as much as £6 million has been ploughed into a single issue.”

Caerphilly’s assembly member Hefin David said he was “relieved that the saga is over” but added it had taken “too long to get to this point”.

After sacking Mr O’Sullivan, he said: “What I would say to the people of Caerphilly now is wait until the employment tribunal takes place in public, wait until the full facts emerge in the public domain. Then make a reasoned decision.”

He also said the decision was made “clearly on political ground”.

He then added the matter “is far from concluded”.

Mr O’Sullivan said he would be appealing the decision to sack him and that he would take the matter to an employment tribunal.

He claimed the council dismissed him without notice on Wednesday evening.

He called the sacking a “travesty” before saying he had “no regrets”.

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