Captains Renault

The title isn't a reference to "round up the usual suspects," or "I'm shocked, shocked, to find gambling going on," but instead a lesser known line: "I'm just a poor corrupt public official."

YRHT asks "How much does a corrupt U.S. govt official in Iraq make?" while linking to this LA Times story. For those who don't want to deal with registering, here's the Boston Globe's version of the same:

U.S. government mismanagement of assets in Iraq, from the lack of proper documentation on nearly $100 million in cash to millions of dollars worth of unaccounted-for equipment, are setting back efforts to fight corruption in the fledgling democracy, auditors and critics say.

Iraq became awash in billions of dollars in cash after the U.S. invasion two years ago, often with few or no controls over how that money was spent and accounted for. From the $8.8 billion provided to Iraq's interim government to millions provided to U.S. contractors, investigations have detailed a system ripe for abuse.

The latest indication of that came Wednesday when investigators released a report saying $96.6 million in cash could not be properly accounted for. The total included more than $7 million that was simply gone, according to the report from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.

But what's $7 million among friends? After all, almost $4 BILLION dollars are missing from yet another set of accounts supposedly devoted to Iraqi reconstruction. In contrast, $7 million is, well chump change.

And who are the chumps?

Investigators are looking at a "handful" of possible suspects, said Jim Mitchell, a spokesman for the special inspector general's office. He noted that the inquiry was in an early stage, saying only that the discrepancies uncovered by the auditors warranted referral to criminal investigators.

He also said it was unclear whether the U.S. officials operated in concert, since they served at different times.

"We're not saying the money is lost. We're saying they can't account for it," Mitchell said.

One U.S. official told auditors that he was given $6.75 million on June 21 and told he had to spend the money by June 28, the day the U.S.-led administration in Iraq turned over sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government.

U.S. officials "were under the impression that it was more important to quickly distribute the money to the region than to obtain all necessary documentation," the audit report says.

Auditors were struck by a series of apparent accounting errors in the Rapid Regional Response Program, an obscure rebuilding effort operated from the Hillah office. The program was designed to jump-start reconstruction in south-central Iraq by allowing U.S. officials to quickly issue contracts worth up to $200,000 each.

To pay for contract work in Iraq's cash-based economy, the U.S. appointed military personnel and civilians to physically hand out money to Iraqis. The U.S. officials were then supposed to reconcile those payments with receipts. But the auditors found that such receipts were lacking or incomplete for $96.6 million of $119.9 million in payments.

In one case, two U.S. officials left Iraq after completing their tours of duty without accounting for a total of $1.5 million. The manager of the cash funds zeroed out the balance on a spreadsheet — an apparent attempt "to remove outstanding balances by simply washing accounts," the audit report says. The officials, like all others in the audit, were not named.

In another case, the U.S. on May 30 ordered the removal of the official in charge of the overall cash program, but he remained in the job until June 20. When told he had failed to account for $1,878,870, the official returned exactly that sum three days later — leading to suspicions that he had "a reserve of cash and turned in only the amount" needed to complete the clearance process, the report says.

In another case, one payment official had three errors in his accounting books. In one example, he told superiors that he had given $311,100 to another U.S. official when he had actually handed over $1,210,000, leaving it unclear where the remaining $898,900 was, the report says.

Two other audits, also released Wednesday, criticize the overall U.S. handling of Iraqi and U.S. funds.

For contracts funded with Iraqi money, contract officers could not show that services had been delivered in more than half of 300 contracts valued at $332.9 million.

For contracts funded with $18.4 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds, officers could not even find about a quarter of 48 contracts that had been selected for review. Other contracts were found stuffed in drawers or misfiled.

Hmmmm...IIRC, most folks involved in the "reconstruction" are fully credentialed wingnut operatives--demonstrating several things. One, they don't exactly qualify as "conservative." Hell, the money being talked about here makes the Great Society look pretty skinflint in comparison. Two, the supposed financial acuity of the pro-business set leaves a hell of a lot to be desired. And three, this gang couldn't shoot straight even if you if you gave them a gun mounted on a tripod and grounded in cement.