Army Corps Faked Budget Entries (Funds for Iraq work were stashed)

[rainbow4321]

Nice Friday night news DUMP...


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-corps23sep23,0,6552813.story?track=tottext

The Army Corps of Engineers improperly created fake entries in government ledgers to maintain control over hundreds of millions of dollars in spending for the reconstruction of Iraq, according to a federal audit released Friday.

Corps officials listed $362 million in potential contracts for a nonexistent contractor labeled "Dummy Vendor" in a government database, an accounting trick to preserve funds due to expire at the end of this fiscal year, the audit said.


"They took this money and parked it to use later," said one senior U.S. official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to elaborate on the audit. "It's improper. It's wrong. This is not the way you do government business."

Corps officials acknowledged Friday that the technique was improper but said that there was no intent to deceive. They said that the entries were designed to ensure that the government had enough money on hand to pay contractors already at work in Iraq.

[bigbrother05]

1. bookmarked for later

thanks for posting

[fasttense]

2. That's called misappropriations, when I was in the military,

you would go to jail for that. What has happened to American values? We torture, we steal, we lie, we cheat. My grandmother was right. She said that once you start telling lies, the other sins are a whole lot easier to commit.

[rainbow4321]

3. And that you need more lies to cover up the original lie....

That's what we are looking at here...8 years of regime lies to cover lies that cover more lies.. I can just hear the massive grinding of shredders that will be running once the Dems are about to take over again and the book$ are thrown wide open. We will probably never know how much $$ has been really pocketed/wasted.

[elehhhhna]

4. The money is parked in the US STOCK MARKET................(K&Rec#3)

April 4, 2005:

Of the $18.4 billion that Congess appropriated 16 months ago for postwar reconstruction in Iraq, only $3.6 billion has been spent to date. There has been much head-scratching over this uncharacteristic failure of the Pentagon to spend money promptly.

A recently unearthed portion of a Defense Department memo sheds some light on the issue, suggesting that more than $14 billion earmarked for reconstruction was actually invested on Wall Street. The memo’s author and date are unknown. This portion of the apparently classified document — marked “page 3” — was mistakenly sent to Mid-America Seed Savers, a nonprofit organization in Lawrence, Kansas whose members had filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents related to the Army’s alleged distribution of genetically engineered wheat seed to farmers in Iraq. The memo fragment is reproduced here in full:

Reconstruction fund enhancement - p. 3

<…> that among these, the scenario with greatest potential was investment in a medium-risk portfolio of U.S.-based securities. To accomplish this without incurring excessive and unwarranted scrutiny, the Secretary issued a classified order creating the Office of Special Brokerage Services (OSBS), to which management of the reconstruction funds was assigned. The OSBS, quietly through third parties, purchased approximately $5 billion in stock in February, 2004. Another $9.2 billion was invested the following month. As of December 31, 2004, the fund had shown a net growth of approximately -1.7%.

Much more here:
http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/04/iraq_billions_secretly_invested_in_us_stock_market.html