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US accused of 'mismanagement' of Iraq police contract
The US state department's gross mismanagement of a multibillion-dollar contract for training Iraqi police has left US funds vulnerable to waste and fraud, a watchdog said today.
In a scathing report, Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, strongly criticized both the state department and DynCorp International, the firm that won the $2.5 billion contract in 2004–the largest awarded by the state department.
The state department's bureau of international narcotics and law enforcement, which administers the six-year-old training contract, has failed to adequately increase oversight personnel of the contract despite warnings since 2005 from auditors and Congress, Bowen said in an audit to be released today.
"Poor contract management which plagued the early years of the contract" have largely continued because the bureau's initiatives to improve performance have "fallen short", Bowen said. "As a result, over $2.5bn in US funds are vulnerable to waste and fraud."
Members of Congress said the latest findings cast doubt on DynCorp's ability to handle similar contracts in Afghanistan.
"I don't have any confidence that they're doing a better job there … If we don't correct this immediately, we are going to be having the same conversation a few years from now," said Senator Claire McCaskill, the Democratic chairman of the Senate subcommittee on contracting oversight.