Written by The Pentagon doesn’t know what happened to more than $100 million in cash held at Saddam Hussein’s palace in Baghdad during the Iraq war, according to a new report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
What’s more, the Pentagon can’t find documents to explain what it spent as much as $1.7 billion on from funds held on behalf of the Iraqi government by the New York Federal Reserve, the report says.
The missing records raise new questions about how the US government handled billions of dollars in Iraqi funds during the war.
The new report, the latest in a multi-year investigation by the inspector general into missing money in Iraq, paints a picture of Pentagon officials digging through boxes of hard copy records looking for missing paper copies of Excel spreadsheets, monthly reports and other paper documents that should have been kept detailing what the money was spent on and why those expenditures were necessary. Apparently, there are no electronic records to back up the spending.
The Inspector General’s report concludes that the problem is simply one of “records management.” But the report explains the missing records make it impossible to conduct a complete accounting of what happened to the funds.
The missing money came from the Development Fund for Iraq, a cache of billions of dollars in frozen Saddam Hussein regime assets that was held at the New York Federal Reserve on behalf of the Iraqi people.
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The Money Tree and the Evil of Good Intentions
2012 Leave a Comment
“Do you think money grows on trees?”
Dad
It’s something most of us learn when we’re very young. Money isn’t easy to come by. You have to earn it. You have to work for it. You have to do your chores. You have to get a job delivering newspapers. You have to mow people’s lawns or shovel their walks when it snows. You have to do something productive and then people will pay you. Only then can you go to the candy store and buy yourself a treat, or spend your Saturday afternoon in a dark movie theater enjoying an eye popping spectacle. That was part of Americana when I was growing up, learning that things weren’t just handed to you, they needed to be earned. READ MORE »