James Glanz; 24/5/08
A Pentagon audit of US Army payments to contractors in Iraq has found that almost none followed federal rules and that, in some cases, contracts worth millions of dollars were paid for despite little or no record of what, if anything, was received. The audit of $US8.2 billion ($A8.5 billion) in American taxpayers’ money also found a sometimes stunning lack of accountability in the way the military spent about $US1.8 billion in seized or frozen Iraqi assets, which in the early phases of the Iraq war were often doled out in stacks or pallets of cash. The audit was released this week along with a congressional hearing on the payments.
Tags: Corruption, Iraq, Terrorism, USA