Profiteering for fun and, uhhhh, profit
The administration hand-picked the people who would be in charge of reconstruction in Iraq. No experience? No problem! As long as you're a right-winger, you're all right by us!
But there is a problem-- $100 million can't be accounted for by the US officials responsible for the piles of cash money. The LA Times has the story:
Auditors were struck by a series of apparent accounting errors in the Rapid Regional Response Program, an obscure rebuilding effort operated from the Hillah office. The program was designed to jump-start reconstruction in south-central Iraq by allowing U.S. officials to quickly issue contracts worth up to $200,000 each.
To pay for contract work in Iraq's cash-based economy, the U.S. appointed military personnel and civilians to physically hand out money to Iraqis. The U.S. officials were then supposed to reconcile those payments with receipts. But the auditors found that such receipts were lacking or incomplete for $96.6 million of $119.9 million in payments.
In one case, two U.S. officials left Iraq after completing their tours of duty without accounting for a total of $1.5 million. The manager of the cash funds zeroed out the balance on a spreadsheet — an apparent attempt "to remove outstanding balances by simply washing accounts," the audit report says. The officials, like all others in the audit, were not named.
But there is a problem-- $100 million can't be accounted for by the US officials responsible for the piles of cash money. The LA Times has the story:
Auditors were struck by a series of apparent accounting errors in the Rapid Regional Response Program, an obscure rebuilding effort operated from the Hillah office. The program was designed to jump-start reconstruction in south-central Iraq by allowing U.S. officials to quickly issue contracts worth up to $200,000 each.
To pay for contract work in Iraq's cash-based economy, the U.S. appointed military personnel and civilians to physically hand out money to Iraqis. The U.S. officials were then supposed to reconcile those payments with receipts. But the auditors found that such receipts were lacking or incomplete for $96.6 million of $119.9 million in payments.
In one case, two U.S. officials left Iraq after completing their tours of duty without accounting for a total of $1.5 million. The manager of the cash funds zeroed out the balance on a spreadsheet — an apparent attempt "to remove outstanding balances by simply washing accounts," the audit report says. The officials, like all others in the audit, were not named.
posted by Matt Sandwich | 2:30 PM
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