SF GATE
An auditing board sponsored by the United Nations recommended Friday that the United States repay as much as $208 million to the Iraqi government for contracting work in 2003 and 2004 assigned to Kellogg, Brown & Root, the Halliburton Co. subsidiary.
The work was paid for with Iraqi oil proceeds, but the board says it was either carried out at inflated prices or done poorly. The board did not give examples of poor work.
Some of the work involved postwar fuel imports carried out by KBR that previous audits have criticized as grossly overpriced. But this is the first time that an international auditing group has suggested that the United States repay some of that money to Iraq.
The U.N. group, the International Advisory and Monitoring Board of the Development Fund for Iraq, compiled reports from an array of Pentagon, U.S. government and private auditors to carry out its analysis.
A spokeswoman for Halliburton, Cathy Mann, said the questions raised in the military audits, carried out in the Pentagon's Defense Contract Auditing Agency, had largely focused on issues of paperwork and documentation and alleged nothing about the quality of the work done by KBR. The monitoring board relied heavily on the Pentagon audits in drawing its conclusions.
Mann said, in an e-mail response to questions, that "it would be completely wrong to say or imply that any of these costs that were incurred at the client's direction for its benefit are 'overcharges.' "
The monitoring board, created by the United Nations specifically to oversee the Development Fund -- which includes Iraqi oil revenues and some money seized from Saddam Hussein's government -- said that because the audits were continuing, it was too early to say how much of the $208 million should ultimately be paid back.
No comments:
Post a Comment