The US State Department so badly managed a US$1.2 billion contract for Iraqi police training that it cannot tell what it got for the money it spent, a report said yesterday.
Because of disarray in invoices and records on the project and because the government is trying to recoup money paid inappropriately to contractor DynCorp International LLC, auditors have suspended temporarily their effort to review the contract's implementation, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen Jr said.
Bowen had been trying to review a February 2004 contract to DynCorp awarded by the State Department's Bureau for International Narcotics and Law (INL) Enforcement Affairs. The company was to provide housing, food, security, facilities, training support, law enforcement staff with various specialties as well as weapons and armor for personnel assigned to the program.
"I guess it's a familiar theme," Bowen said Monday, in that problems have been documented previously with both DynCorp and the agency overseeing the contract.
Although training has been conducted and equipment provided under the contract, the bureau is in the process of trying to organize and validate invoices and does not believe its records accurately show the reasons for most payments that were made, the report said.
"As a result, INL does not know specifically what it received for most of the US$1.2 billion in expenditures under its DynCorp contract for the Iraqi Police Training Program," Bowen said in a new 18-page report.
The contract, now in its third year, is to support training programs in Iraq and Afghanistan to help produce local forces that can take over from US-led forces and provide their own security in each country. Bowen focused on the Iraq program in the new report.
"Lack of controls" and "serious contract management issues" at the INL bureau made it "vulnerable to waste and fraud," Bowen said.
The management problems have been pointed out previously and a letter from the bureau was included in the new report outlining reforms that are said to be under way. The bureau has added staff, is reviewing invoices and has demanded refunds and other reconciliation for some past questionable payments made to DynCorp, said Elizabeth Verville, acting assistant secretary for the bureau.
DynCorp did not immediately respond to a request for a comment.
Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, said on Monday: "Once again, [the inspector general] has shown how vulnerable the federal government is to waste when it doesn't invest up front in proper contract oversight. It will now take the Department of State three to five years to review invoices and demand repayment from DynCorp for unjustified expenses."
Bowen reported in January that the State Department paid US$43.8 million to DynCorp for a residential camp for police training personnel outside of Baghdad's Adnan Palace grounds. He said the camp had been empty for months; about US$4.2 million of the money was improperly spent on 20 VIP trailers and an Olympic-size pool, all ordered by the Iraqi Ministry of Interior but never authorized by the US.
The report also said DynCorp has been asked twice to improve its management of government-owned equipment in Iraq.
DynCorp has been mentioned as a possible replacement for Blackwater USA in the contract to provide armed security for diplomats in Iraq.
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