Audit finds Pentagon dept lost hundreds of millions of dollars
Our government in action! An audit by the private audit firm Ernst & Young has found that the Pentagon department that handles the logistical needs of the military has lost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Ernst & Young found that the Defense Logistics Agency failed to properly document more than $800 million in construction projects, just one of a series of examples where it lacks a paper trail for millions of dollars in property and equipment. Across the board, its financial management is so weak that its leaders and oversight bodies have no reliable way to track the huge sums it’s responsible for, the firm warned in its initial audit of the massive Pentagon purchasing agent.
…In one part of the audit, completed in mid-December, Ernst & Young found that misstatements in the agency’s books totaled at least $465 million for construction projects it financed for the Army Corps of Engineers and other agencies. For construction projects designated as still “in progress,” meanwhile, it didn’t have sufficient documentation — or any documentation at all — for another $384 million worth of spending.
The agency also couldn’t produce supporting evidence for many items that are documented in some form — including records for $100 million worth of assets in the computer systems that conduct the agency’s day-to-day business.
There’s more. In fact, it goes on and on, listing numerous examples of shoddy accounting. One wonders who is benefiting by this incompetence, assuming it isn’t downright corruption.
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Our government in action! An audit by the private audit firm Ernst & Young has found that the Pentagon department that handles the logistical needs of the military has lost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Ernst & Young found that the Defense Logistics Agency failed to properly document more than $800 million in construction projects, just one of a series of examples where it lacks a paper trail for millions of dollars in property and equipment. Across the board, its financial management is so weak that its leaders and oversight bodies have no reliable way to track the huge sums it’s responsible for, the firm warned in its initial audit of the massive Pentagon purchasing agent.
…In one part of the audit, completed in mid-December, Ernst & Young found that misstatements in the agency’s books totaled at least $465 million for construction projects it financed for the Army Corps of Engineers and other agencies. For construction projects designated as still “in progress,” meanwhile, it didn’t have sufficient documentation — or any documentation at all — for another $384 million worth of spending.
The agency also couldn’t produce supporting evidence for many items that are documented in some form — including records for $100 million worth of assets in the computer systems that conduct the agency’s day-to-day business.
There’s more. In fact, it goes on and on, listing numerous examples of shoddy accounting. One wonders who is benefiting by this incompetence, assuming it isn’t downright corruption.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
As an American voter, this news makes me question the competency and responsibility of our own government! The finances of governments and businesses alike are extremely important to protect from outside sources. cyber security will help protect sensitive information from foreign sources that may use the information for their own benefit. In this specific case with the Pentagon, one must truly wonder how money just disappears under our own government’s eyes.
Well, the Pentagon is always the whipping-boy/poster-child, for this-sorta-stuff.
We can’t however, forget the massive amounts of fraud/corruption that goes on in the social-welfare/income-transfer, end of the Federal Government, which is larger than the Military.
30 million people still get free cell-phones & service, every month, with no end in sight. That program started at $400 million/year, and is well over $1 billion/year, today. (and they borrowed it all)
When they start talking about trillions of missing dollars then they will have my attention, hundreds of millions are almost inconsequential, misplace or have just one F-35 slip off the deck of a carrier in rough seas and there goes a couple of hundred million. The government has plenty of other peoples money. No problem.
Shocking. Not really. And most of the spending, as usual, is in the tail, not the teeth. If the DOD and congress really cared about not wasting money, they’d start issuing out pink slips to the DOD civilian workforce who make far more money than the soldiers they’ve ‘replaced’ and carry an attitude of entitlement and superiority over the soldiers they are suppose to serve. But that’s just me.
Wayne, great points! It’s the same on the State level, never any mention of the hundreds and hundreds of millions spent on “social welfare” programs and medical care, not to mention the 1.3 Billion the State spent on benefits for Illegal Aliens last year alone….
Cotour, also good point. But don’t forget, a hundred million here, a hundred million there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money…. LOL!
This is the same DoD which has physically lost M1 Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, and countless other major end items. It is absolutely unsurprising that the lose control of money, which is essentially bits and bytes.
China will never have to fire a shot ….. or maybe they are more corrupt than we?!
They should have to use Quickbooks…
Whether or not waste happens at the DOD or in Medicare, we should be upset. That it happens all over is just evidence that a sprawling unaccountable government has more negative impacts the bigger it gets.
Perhaps these are the same dollars that the Obama administration flew into Iran in the middle of the night.