Your Tax $$$ at Work ! (excerpts)

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Gene Spafford <spaf () cerias purdue edu>
Date: January 25, 2006 10:07:20 AM EST
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Fwd: Your Tax $$$ at Work ! (excerpts)

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    Audit Describes Misuse of Funds in Iraq Projects
    By James Glanz
    The New York Times

    Wednesday 25 January 2006

    A new audit of American financial practices in Iraq has  
uncovered irregularities including millions of reconstruction dollars  
stuffed casually into footlockers and filing cabinets, an American  
soldier in the Philippines who gambled away cash belonging to Iraq,  
and three Iraqis who plunged to their deaths in a rebuilt hospital  
elevator that had been improperly certified as safe.

    The audit, released yesterday by the office of the Special  
Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, expands on its previous  
findings of fraud, incompetence and confusion as the American  
occupation poured money into training and rebuilding programs in 2003  
and 2004. The audit uncovers problems in an area that includes half  
the land mass in Iraq, with new findings in the southern and central  
provinces of Anbar, Karbala, Najaf, Wasit, Babil, and Qadisiya. The  
special inspector reports to the secretary of defense and the  
secretary of state.


...One official kept $2 million in a bathroom safe, another more than  
half a million dollars in an unlocked footlocker.  One contractor  
received more than $100,000 to completely refurbish an Olympic pool  
but only polished the pumps; even so, local American officials  
certified the work as completed.  More than 2,000 contracts ranging  
in value from a few thousand dollars to more than half a million,  
some $88 million in all, were examined by agents from the inspector  
general's office.  The report says that in some cases the agents  
found clear indications of potential fraud and that investigations  
into those cases are continuing.

...The money, most from Iraqi oil proceeds and cash seized from  
Saddam Hussein's government, also easily found its way out of the  
compound and the country.  In one case, an American soldier assigned  
as an assistant to the Iraqi Olympic boxing team was given huge  
amounts of cash for a trip to the Philippines, where the soldier  
gambled away somewhere between $20,000 and $60,000 of the money.   
Exactly how much has not been determined, the report says, because no  
one kept track of how much money he received in the first place.

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