Audit finds Pentagon dept lost hundreds of millions of dollars
Please consider donating to Behind the Black, by giving either a one-time contribution or a regular subscription, as outlined in the tip jar to the right or below. Your support will allow me to continue covering science and culture as I have for the past twenty years, independent and free from any outside influence.
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.
Please consider donating to Behind the Black, by giving either a one-time contribution or a regular subscription, as outlined in the tip jar to the right or below. Your support will allow me to continue covering science and culture as I have for the past twenty years, independent and free from any outside influence.
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.
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.