It's not lost. It's just not accounted for under gov't contracting invoicing/auditing policies, especially if there are subcontractors involved. Think of it as your checkbook. If you don't record the information in the ledger properly, you aren't sure what you've spent or where your spent it at. It's the same issue here. They need to put together their expense reports properly, probably by month to coincide with their invoicing practice, and resubmit for auditing. Just to give you a perspecitve of what's involved, one of my friends is currently working over there solely to put the various contractors finances in order. She works 16 hour days/7 days a week and will be there for a total of 18 months. It's a lot of paperwork to keep track of.
I've done work for several govt clients in the past. When you go into the process of accepting a government contract (especially a massive one) you create a bookkeeping system. Certainly some money is going to be lost in the cracks, but the State Department is saying this one is so bad they're not even sure what they got for the money.
$43.8 million was supposed to build a residential camp for police training in Baghdad but it turns out the camp is empty. $4.2 million went to VIP trailers and an Olympic-sized pool (ordered by the Iraqi Interior Ministry but not authorized by the US).
The best part of this story is the fact that DynCorp was in trouble for the same sloppy bookkeeping regarding a 2004 INL contract.
Jesus Christ, wtf is wrong with these *ss government contractors who can't follow simple procedure!?!? More importantly, wtf is wrong with the idiots who award them billion dollar contracts after they've proven their inability to deliver clean books in the past!?!
