Posted by The Crux |
After billions of dollars in cash were sent to Iraq, the Army sought bids from contractors to help investigate fraud. Reviewer Management International (RMI), a small company newly formed by ex-government employee Robert Raggio, ended up getting a $1.5 million no-bid contract. USA Today reported:
"RMI was hired to create a database to track the $7.3 billion in Iraqi government money U.S. officials doled out — much of it in $100 bills shipped to the country on pallets — after the 2003 invasion. Federal auditors had uncovered a bribery scheme involving more than $8.6 million from the Development Fund for Iraq and wanted to determine if there was more corruption.
"But the Army failed to properly oversee Raggio's contract and after nearly a year of work he delivered a database that was incomplete, unreliable and nearly unusable, according to a January report from Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The database couldn't meet one of its primary goals: allowing investigators to connect payments to the U.S. officials who made them, Bowen's report said."
The contract amount was small by corporate standards but was 15 times larger than Raggio's annual government salary had been....
According to USA Today, the same day that Raggio quit his government job (to "pursue other opportunities"), his newly formed RMI got the contract. This called into question laws that prohibit government employees from reaping personal gain from their official actions.
It was a no-bid contract, because the competitive-bidding process had been canceled after evidence suggested that one or more bidders had inside information about the contract. Raggio may have had such information, given that the government job he had quit was financial manager for the Iraq reconstruction effort.
In August, some time after the Army began investigating RMI, the company and Raggio were suspended from receiving government contracts.
Problems with contractors are not new, of course. For examples, see the posts below.
* Inspector General Blocked Investigations into Waste & Fraud?
* Billions over Baghdad: Poor Accounting Allowed Waste & Fraud
* Gov. Contractors: Driving up War's Costs?
* Contractor Fraud: Driving Up Healthcare Costs?
* How the Energy Dept. Incinerated Tax Dollars
* New Orleans Still Suffering after 2 Years and Billions of Tax Dollars
* How the Defense Dept. Flushes Dollars Down Latrine
* Insurance Companies Get Away with Over-billing Medicare
* U.S. Embassies: Still More Examples of Contractor Problems
* Contractors Offering Bribes to Army Personnel?
* Taxpayers Losing Money to Engorged Contractors
* Audit Red-Flags Contractor in Iraq
* Defense Dept. Rewarding Bad Contractor Performance?
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