Over $125 million in State Department funds to contractors assisting the US mission in Afghanistan is lost and might never be recovered.
An Inspector General report published Monday found that State failed to properly oversee the deals because it didn’t follow its own guidelines.
“The Department did not consistently meet Federal and Department contract management and closeout requirements,” the study concluded, referring to the avalanche of deals cut to rebuild Afghanistan.
A third of contract files reviewed were lost or destroyed. Among the contract files that were completed, all lacked proper documentation and time frame clauses to close the contracts.
“As a result,” the IG report stated, “$68 million in contract files could not be located or were prematurely destroyed, $6.3 million in funding had not been deobligated and had expired, and up to $52 million in funding was available for deobligation.”
A December 2013 audit of the State Department’s contracts supporting the mission in Iraq found “similar problems.”
The war in Afghanistan led to an enormous surge in State Department contracts for services. In 2002, there were 17 “contract actions” worth approximately $126 million. By 2013, those numbers swelled to 1,464 contract actions, worth a total of $930 million.
The audit of the State Department’s contracting activity was itself performed by a contractor, Kearney & Company, P.C.
