You folks get so bent out of shape at "lies" that you do not know what you are talking about. What do you call this?
Iraq Finance Audit Shows Lack of Controls
<font size=3>
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
AP Economics Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- An audit of Iraq's oil revenues revealed a lack of adequate financial controls and an inability to get information on large non-competitive contracts, including one awarded to Halliburton, the board established to monitor Iraq finances reported Thursday.
The International Advisory and Monitoring Board on Iraq released an audit prepared by accounting firm KPMG, which cited concerns about an inability to track how much oil is being produced in Iraq and a lack of proper internal controls on the money being spent.
hosted.ap.org
The board, which met Wednesday and Thursday in Washington, said it had been unable to gain access to audits already done by U.S. agencies on a number of noncompetitive contracts awarded for various Iraq reconstruction projects including one given to Halliburton to repair Iraq's oil production facilities.
Halliburton, formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, has been awarded more than $7 billion in Iraq contract work, including not only the oil production restoration project but also the feeding and housing of U.S. troops. Democrats in Congress have criticized those contracts.
Monitoring board members said L. Paul Bremer, the former head of the American-led occupation in Iraq, had assured them U.S. audits of the single-source contracts would be provided, but now they were being told legal issues had to be cleared up before the audits could be turned over.
The monitoring board said it was pressing U.S. authorities to provide a list of all noncompetitive contracts that had been awarded.
"We are still waiting for a response," said Bert Keuppen, a senior adviser to the finance department of the International Monetary Fund. "I think as time goes by, the members of the board will get a little more impatient."
The board is composed of officials from the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development. It was authorized by the U.N. Security Council in May 2003 to monitor the operations of the Development Fund for Iraq, which was designated as the recipient of Iraq oil revenues and assets of the previous government frozen by various countries.
The KPMG audit, which covered the period from May through December of last year showed $10.3 billion had been put into the fund, with $5.6 billion of that coming as a transfer from the U.N. Oil for Food program.
The United Nations and Congress are conducting separate investigations into allegations of corruption in that program, which was designed to provide humanitarian relief to the Iraqi people from economic sanctions imposed during the presidency of Saddam Hussein.
The audit said an additional $3.7 million in the reconstruction fund came from Iraq oil sales that occurred after the U.S.-led coalition took over the country last year.
The audit said $757,550 of the $10.3 billion in the reconstruction fund represented the amount in frozen assets turned over by various countries that had seized accounts connected to the prior government. The largest amounts included $211,077 from Switzerland, $207,945 from the United States, $184,066 from Britain and $98,088 from Japan.
The IMF last week formally recognized Iraq's new interim government following the June 28 handover of power from the U.S.-led coalition.
IMF spokesman Thomas Dawson said Thursday that an IMF team had good preliminary discussions with members of the new Iraqi government last week with the goal of beginning to provide IMF loans to the country by the final three months of this year. His organization has said it could loan $850 million to Iraq in emergency post-conflict assistance and provide a total of $2.5 billion to $4.25 billion over the next three years. |
