Billions in cash to Iraq not well monitored

"A House committee report . . . questioned whether some of the billions of dollars in cash shipped to Iraq after the American invasion — mostly in huge, shrink-wrapped stacks of $100 bills — might have ended up with the insurgent groups now battling American troops.
The report was released by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee at a hearing when Democrats sharply questioned the former American civilian administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, about lax management of the nearly $12 billion in cash shipped to Iraq between May 2003 and June 2004. [1]

"House Democrats criticized former Iraq occupation administrator L. Paul Bremer . . . for disbursing nearly $9 billion in Iraqi oil revenue without instituting accounting systems to track more carefully how Iraqi officials were using that money.
. . . The Democrats cited an audit conducted two years ago by the special inspector general for Iraq's reconstruction that found that Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) engaged in 'less than adequate' managerial and financial control of the money.
. . . [Bremer said] that he was trying to make the best of a bad situation. Iraqi ministries, he said, lacked modern financial management systems, and the country's banks could not handle electronic fund transfers. Waiting to implement new accounting and banking practices, he insisted, would have resulted in lengthy delays in paying salaries and pensions.
'Delay would have been demoralizing and unfair to the citizens of Iraq,' Bremer said. 'Delay might well have exacerbated the nascent insurgency and thereby increased the danger to Americans on the ground.' " [2]

sources
[1] Shenon, Philip. (The New York Times). House Panel Questions Monitoring of Cash Shipped to Iraq. February 7, 2007.
[2] Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. (The Washington Post). Democrats, Bremer Spar Over Iraq Spending. February 7, 2007.

posted: friday, february 9, 2007, 11:18 PM ET

tags: iraq bremer