- WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon
wasted $100 million (£55 million) buying airline tickets that were
never used then failed to seek a refund for them, the US Senate was told
yesterday.
-
- The defence department was also accused of reimbursing
employees for tickets already paid for by the government.
-
- This cost more than £4 million, according to a
report by the government accounting office, the investigative arm of Congress.
-
- GAO reports on Pentagon airline ticketing were presented
to the Senate government affairs committee.
-
- Its chairman, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, said: "At
a time when every dollar in the department should be going to support our
troops and wage the war on terrorism or otherwise defend our country, it's
very disturbing that the GAO found that $100 million has been wasted since
1997."
-
- The investigators uncovered astonishingly lax controls,
and evidence of widespread misconduct and fraud by defence department and
military personnel.
-
- Investigators posed as Pentagon employees and persuaded
defence officials to generate a ticket, then successfully collected a boarding
pass from an airport ticket counter, proving how easy it is to exploit
the lack of oversight of the system.
-
- Though all Pentagon tickets are refundable, in a deal
with the five biggest US airlines, the department relied on employees to
report unused tickets. They often did not.
-
- Outright fraud is suspected in the case of many employees
who asked to be personally reimbursed for tickets the Pentagon had paid
for.
-
- One employee, now serving a five-year sentence in military
prison, stole a Pentagon account number, bought 70 airline tickets worth
more than £33,000 and sold them to colleagues and friends.
-
- The scandal has revived memories of the bad old days
of the 1980s, when the Pentagon's procurement services came under fire
for such items as a £355 lavatory seat, and a £4,200 coffee
pot.
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=ZKGATHTRN
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