Speaker of the House Robert A. DeLeo said he was kept in the dark about former Gov. Deval Patrick’s administration’s move to secretly divert nearly $37 million in public money to off-budget accounts, and vowed to dig into the accounts.

“Quite frankly it’s something we really should take a look at, in terms of how this occurred (and) what happened,” DeLeo told reporters today following an unrelated State House event. He said he was never aware of the behind-the-scene maneuvering until “about 7 o’clock this morning” when he read a front page Herald story detailing the so-called hidden “trust” accounts the Patrick administration kept.

“If I didn’t know about it, I would doubt that any member in the Legislature would have known about it,” the Winthrop Democrat said. “It is disconcerting to me.”

The Herald reported today that the accounts paid for a $1.35 million trade junket tab, bloated advertising contracts, and a deal with a federally subsidized tourism venture backed by U.S. Sen. Harry Reid.

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The accounts took in millions from state quasi-public agencies, allowing Patrick to skirt legislative approval and evade state budget cutbacks during the recession, the Herald found.

A DeLeo aide later clarified that the speaker is not calling for a formal investigation yet.

Patrick finished his second and final term in January. He has since taken a job at Bain Capital. The Herald reported Sunday that he also quietly launched his own consulting shop, Wabash, Inc., which was identified by Boston 2024 last week as donating at least $25,000 in services to its push for the 2024 Summer Games.

DeLeo didn’t detail how he’d approach an investigation, given he’d only learned about the accounts hours before.

“I think we as a legislature should take a look at it, as a first step,” he said.

One of the trusts was run by a close Patrick loyalist, Betsy Wall, a former top campaign aide later appointed as the $134,000 head of travel and tourism, the Herald reported.

The trust dinging taxpayers for Patrick’s around-the-world travel was funded by Massport and the Mass Tech Collaborative, an obscure agency that gets state and federal dollars, including an injection of Obama stimulus money.

Those two agencies, along with the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, funneled nearly ?$27 million to the trust plan.

Records show that from 2011 to 2014, Patrick and his traveling entourage rang up a $535,558 hotel tab, $332,193 in airfare, $305,976 for limos and transportation and $175,000 in other costs. All told, it came to $1.35 million.

The total cost of Patrick’s overseas trips, including a $225,000 visit to China in 2007 — before the trust accounts were created — cost $1,573,949, according to records from the state’s Housing and Economic Development office, which oversaw the accounts. The 10 overseas junkets cost far more than the Patrick administration previously disclosed.

State Rep. Shaunna O’Connell, a Taunton Republican who sits on the House Post-Audit Committee, is also demanding a full investigation to “find out if anything inappropriate was going on” with the Patrick administration using the “scheme” to circumvent the Legislature.

“This is very disturbing,” O’Connell told the Herald. “It looks like a slush fund was being operated with the knowledge and help of the governor’s office.”

O’Connell fired off a letter to Post Audit chairman Rep. David Linsky (D-Natick) asking the committee investigate and call Auditor Suzanne Bump to testify about her knowledge of Patrick using off-budget accounts to evade legislative oversight.

She added: “That’s why we have an auditor to oversee these things.”