Pentagon can't account for $8.7 billion in Iraqi funds

Source: Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Baghdad — The Defense Department is unable to properly
account for $8.7 billion out of $9.1 billion in Iraqi oil revenue
entrusted to it between 2004 and 2007, according to a newly released
audit that underscores a pattern of poor record-keeping during the war.

Of that amount, the military failed to provide any records at all for
$2.6 billion in purported reconstruction expenditure, says the report by
the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, which is
responsible for monitoring U.S. spending in Iraq. The rest of the money
was not properly deposited in special accounts as required under
Treasury Department rules, making it difficult to trace how it was spent.

Though there is no apparent evidence of fraud, the improper accounting
practices add to the pattern of mismanagement, reckless spending and, in
some instances, corruption uncovered by the agency since 2004, when it
was created to oversee the total of $53 billion in U.S. taxpayer money

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