Management

GSA Scandal in Perspective: $8 billion in stolen Iraq funds?

From May 2003 to June 2004, the Federal Reserve shipped $12 billion in cash — 281 million individual bills strapped to wooden pallets — to Iraq, to ...

Federal News Network Staff

April 18, 2012 5:36 pm

< a min read

From May 2003 to June 2004, the Federal Reserve shipped $12 billion in cash — 281 million individual bills strapped to wooden pallets — to Iraq, to be disbursed by the interim Coalition Provisional Authority, headed by L. Paul Bremer.

But Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, said the government could not account for $8 billion of it, telling a congressional oversight panel it could be the “largest theft of funds in national history.”

“The CPA did not establish or implement sufficient managerial, financial and contractual controls to ensure that funds were used in a transparent manner,” Bowen wrote in his report.

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