A former high-ranking California State University official collected more than $150,000 in improper expense reimbursements over three years, including claims for unnecessary trips to locales such as Amsterdam and Shanghai, meals that exceeded allowable amounts and commutes between his Northern California home and Cal State’s Long Beach headquarters, a state audit has found.

The audit, released Wednesday, also scolds the university for a lack of oversight in approving expenses that were “unnecessary and not in the best interest of the university or the state.”

It comes at an especially troublesome time for the system, which recently has taken a series of controversial actions, such as steep student fee hikes, enrollment reductions and drastic cost-cutting measures across the 23-campus system to help close a half-billion-dollar budget gap.

University officials said the subject of the audit is David J. Ernst, the former chief of information technology services. Ernst left Cal State in July 2008 for reasons not related to the audit, officials said, and is now associate vice president for information resources and communications at the University of California. An assistant in Ernst’s office said he was traveling and could not immediately be reached for comment.