2009-02-02

Bloomberg exposes the extend of corruption in US government

I am glad to see so many disturbing reports coming from Bloomberg and showing how independent and professional they are. Here are some quotes from a report published on the 30th of Jan 2009 [emphasis mine]:
Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Senator Kit Bond shifted in his chair at a 2005 congressional hearing, poised with a question on national security. He turned to Treasury Secretary John Snow, who was seated at a witness table.

Was Snow sure, asked Bond, a Missouri Republican, that a Treasury Department computer on order for $8.9 million would help detect terrorist money laundering?

“Yes, absolutely,” Snow said.

A year later, in July 2006, the U.S. Treasury Department abandoned the project. The computer didn’t work. The department had spent $14.7 million -- a 65 percent increase above the original budget -- for nothing.

There was a final ignominy: Under the terms of the contract, Electronic Data Systems Corp., the vendor, collected a bonus of $638,126.

As the federal government’s $700 billion bailout of banks sputters, there’s an object lesson for the new administration of President Barack Obama: Federal departments, including Treasury itself, routinely squander tens of billions of dollars a year in taxpayer money as they farm out public business to private corporations.

Obama, like presidents before him, said during his bid for the White House that he wanted to curtail waste in government. With contracting, he faces a mismanaged system that accounts for almost 40 cents of every federal dollar spent outside of mandatory obligations such as Social Security and Medicare.

Not Earmarks

When compared with all federal contracting, just a fraction of U.S. spending waste comes from so-called earmarks, which elected officials often criticize as the unnecessary pet projects of politicians.

The “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska, for example, had a price tag of $398 million. By contrast, the government spent $368.4 billion on all contracts in 2008, and Republican Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn estimates that about $100 billion of that was wasted.

U.S. spending on 3.7 million contracts in 2008 represented an increase of 76 percent over 2000 levels.

“We have a broken, broken system that rewards incompetence,” says Coburn, 60, who has been examining purchasing breakdowns since his election to Congress in 2005. “We need to totally change contracting.”

Bureaucrats, not elected officials, run the U.S. purchasing system, well out of public sight. And their bosses keep the spending secret by not releasing complete contract files to the public.

Just as taxpayers can’t find out how the Treasury and the Federal Reserve used the first half of the bank bailout, Americans are often denied access to public records that provide details on how hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars are spent in contracts.

Bloomberg News filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the Treasury Department, the Commerce Department and the Fed asking for documents on the bailout and routine contracts.

As of Jan. 12, seven months after receiving the first request, the three agencies had provided incomplete documents with blacked-out words or nothing at all.

In many cases, bureaucrats are motivated to give millions of dollars in bonuses to contractors no matter how poorly a company performs because generosity with taxpayer money may help them land better-paying jobs after they leave the government.

Contractors on dozens of jobs at federal departments collected more than $8 billion in what federal auditors said were unwarranted bonuses from 1999 to 2005.

In 2007, military radio maker Harris Corp. developed a hand-held computer for the 2010 census that failed to work in tests in a California heat wave. Still, the Commerce Department’s Census Bureau awarded Harris $14.2 million in bonuses in a contract that increased to $798 million from $600 million, according to federal investigators.

“Contracting is a total mess,” says John Lehman, who fought procurement waste as secretary of the Navy from 1981 to 1987 partly by banning costly contract changes once work was under way, according to Navy records.

“I don’t think in the history of the country it’s been as bad as it is today,” says Lehman, 66, now chairman of J.F. Lehman & Co., a New York-based private equity firm. “You have a system where no one is in charge and no one is held accountable.”
[...]
Obama’s spending plan will create new federal contracts as the government pours money into education, public works and expanded technology.
[...]
Most Cabinet secretaries don’t probe for waste in contracts on their own and don’t push procurement subordinates to police work that’s farmed out.

That lack of accountability holds true even when projects make up significant chunks of their budgets, says Todd Zinser, inspector general at the Commerce Department.
[...]
Federal departments have long since abandoned the intended purpose of cost-plus, and bureaucrats who run contracts routinely award bonuses for almost everything, even when a program fails completely, Lehman says.

“There’s too much gold plating and little accountability with most programs being done on a cost-plus basis,” he says. “We’re paying through the nose.”
[...]
KPMG LLP of New York, the fourth-largest accounting firm by revenue, paid $456 million in 2005 to settle a Justice Department complaint that it had sold phony tax shelters to wealthy clients, wrongly diverting $2.5 billion that should have gone to Treasury.

That wasn’t the only time KPMG has been accused of cheating the government. In 2006, a year after the tax shelter case, KPMG and three other consulting companies paid $25.7 million to settle federal civil lawsuits accusing them of overbilling the Treasury Department and various agencies for travel. KPMG didn’t admit or deny wrongdoing.

Still, the [Treasury] department continued to award contracts to KPMG. Treasury spokeswoman Courtney Forsell says agency contracting meets federal rules. KPMG spokesman Daniel Ginsburg declined to comment.

Mostly, the contracting system goes wrong through spending waste and not lawbreaking. When the Census Bureau hired Harris Corp. in 2006 to provide a hand-held computer for the 2010 nationwide survey of Americans, the agency heralded the $600 million contract as a milestone in census modernization.

Census director Louis Kincannon said the computer would cut down on paper by allowing canvassers to electronically survey households that didn’t return census forms.

“We are revolutionizing the census,” he said in a press release on March 30, 2006.

In June, three months after the contract was signed, Coburn peered down at Kincannon at a congressional hearing and asked what would happen if the computers didn’t work.

“They will work,” Kincannon said. “You might as well ask me what happens if the Postal Service refuses to deliver the census form.”

They didn’t work.
[...]
“I had people quit on me,” she says. “It was definitely frustrating.”

Today, the revolution is largely a bust. Last April, the Census Bureau said it would go back to pen and paper for canvassing and use the computers only to verify addresses of households.

The project has cost $798 million -- about $200 million more than the original estimate. In a big gaffe, both the government and Harris had miscalculated the cost of a help desk for canvassers. Harris and the agency had originally budgeted $5 million.

The price has since jumped to $220 million, a 44-fold increase, according to government records.

Perhaps worst of all, Coburn says, was that Harris collected $14.2 million in bonuses.

“It’s ridiculous,” he says. “They didn’t even perform competently. You could do what they tried to do on a cell phone.”

At a congressional hearing last April, Representative Alan Mollohan, a West Virginia Democrat, questioned Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez about the reason for the payout.

Gutierrez said officials handling the census contract appeared to have let Harris get away with unacceptable work.

[Many examples here, with hundreds of billions wasted, worth reading the whole report]

“This situation is beyond troubling,” says Senator Thomas Carper, a Democrat from Delaware. “More than ever, taxpayers need to know that their hard-earned money is being used wisely. The financial strain on everyone is daunting. I just shake my head when taxpayer money is wasted like this.”
[...]

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

How will the accounting scams ever be solved as long as credence is given to scam artist whistle blowers working at the accounting firms? Mike Hamersley is now a government agent who purportedly blew the whistle on KPMG. What good is cleaning up the system when the scam artists just move from the firms to the government? Hamersley works for the California FTB as a high level tax shelter fraudster working in its tax shelter division confiscating income from hard working citizens. There can be no doubt Hamersley is a public figure and tax shelter fighting crusader, the Encyclopedia says so.


Encyclopedia > Michael Hamersley
Biography

Michael Hamersley is a nationally recognized figure, known for his relentless pursuit of truth and justice. He became a tax scam whistleblower in 2003 exposing the multi-billion dollar tax shelter fraud and conspiracy which has been referred to by the U.S. Attorney General has as "the largest criminal tax case in United States history


http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Michael-Hamersley

I got a couple questions though, I am looking at an email right now where Hamersley advised a client substantial authority existed for a liquidation reincorporation tax shelter where Hamersley told the client if the client sold its subsidiary to the client’s lawyer for one dollar, substantial authority existed for losses that amounted to tens of millions of dollars of loss. Hamersley further advised the client that if the “substance over form” rules where upheld by the IRS, substantial authority still existed, in other words if the IRS disregarded the sham sale which could only have been done to hide the true facts from the IRS, a tax position still existed for the multimillion dollar deduction. Yet, when Hamersley testified to the Senate he specifically stated such behavior was tax fraud. Which is it, did Hamersley lie to the Senate or his client, or both? What good does it do when guys like Scamersley move from the firms to the government to continue their scams?

Anonymous said...

Why does anyone believe any of the fraudulent financial statements? Why does anyone listen to anything KPMG or other auditors have to say? Most of the banks are bankrupt yet the financials keep rolling out, no problem. As an angry Citi investor, I have tried to piece together how I lost most of my money.

KPMG audits many of the financials with all their SIV creations which are used to off load bad loans so the losses don’t have to be recognized on the financials in an Enronesque fashion like KPMG’s client Citi (which is bankrupt).

Of course KPMG’s never ending quest for fees does not stop with fraudulent financials, it also purveyed what Mike Hamersley would describe as fraudulent corporate tax shelters (not withstanding Hamersley’s willing participation in many of them) used by most of KPMG’s big banks including Citi, like the REIT transaction which eliminated tax on real estate loans; back to back loans or rate swaps creating interest deductions; financing arrangements generating noneconomic foreign tax credits; the list goes on forever. All KPMG’s big banks used the strategies to eliminate taxes and create what Hamersley would describe as fraudulent book income (except of course for Hamersley’s own tax shelters).

Tim Flynn is a banking guy and was brought in to purportedly clean up KPMG in 05. Yet Flynn prior to his appointment as KPMG CEO was a high level KPMG audit partner before taking over for O’Kelley and had most of his clients involved in all the fraudulent accounting and questionable tax shelters (which according to Hamersley were fraudulent).

There can be no doubt about the fraud as beginning as early as 2003 many were predicting the implosion that would result from the unsustainable lending patterns of KPMG’s banking clients. In fact, most of KPMG’s banks are bankrupt, what to do?

Flynn decided to throw a bunch of tax partners having nothing to do with all KPMG’s bankrupt banks under the bus for individual shelters which were miniscule in relation to all KPMG’s failed fraudulent audits.

Flynn hired Bennett and Holmes to do his dirty work and assist with the DOJ. Flynn had Bennett and Holmes lie to the DOJ according to an email wherein Joe Loonan KPMG’s head lawyer stated that he did not know if any of the allegations were true (“freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose”). Then to seal the deal Flynn denied legal fees to the tax partners he threw under the bus to the DOJ, even Ernst and Young paid its partners legal fees. Why would Flynn do this after O’Kelley had promised to pay the legal fees?

One can only infer to hide the greater tragedy at KPMG, all of the failed fraudulent audits (not to mention after Flynn cut his deal, KPMG was awarded the audit of the DOJ). If I were a KPMGer, I would not only be extremely concerned about all the civil litigation that is coming for the fraudulent audits but the potential criminal actions that must be coming once the books are scoured (which you know they will be in the civil litigation plus the fraud is relatively easy to discern) because KPMGer’s must know by now the first thing Flynn will do is throw you under the bus and cut off legal fees.

As a decimated Citi investor I am looking for any KPMGer to come forward and tell the truth.

Angry Citi shareholder

pej said...

whistlefraud/angry citi investor - you seem to be the same person and your comment were not written for the purpose of this post.

However, they are not unrelated so I will leave your comments here. Just to let you know that I am no dupe. :-)

Anonymous said...

Whistlewhat, you appear to be the same blogger as Angry Cit investor, Angry Citi shareholder, and Thoreau. You seem to have quite the 'hard on" for Hamersley. I read Travails in Tax and personally observed Hamersley's testimony before the Senate Finance Committee. He seems like an exceedingly honest guy to me. Didn't KPMG say Hamersely had absolutely no involvement or knowledge of tax shelters in its press release to the Senate Finace Committee after Hamersley testified in October 2003? I read that KPMG press release on the PBS Frontline website. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/tax/interviews/release.html

I Concur With Tax Partner said...

Angry Citi Investor, (aka Angry Citi Shareholder, Thoreau, Whistlewhat, Whistlefraud, etc.–I have to admit it is difficult to keep track of all the aliases you are using to post identical comments while appearing to be different bloggers.):

Your comments about Hamersely just don’t make any sense at all. I too am highly skeptical that your bold statements about Hamersley could be based on any reliable evidence at all. I too read Travails in Tax and personally observed Hamersley’s testimony before the Senate Finance Committee. He seems like an exceedingly honest guy to me too. Yeah, isn't it a fact that KPMG said Hamersely had absolutely no involvement or knowledge of tax shelters in its press release to the Senate Finace Committee after Hamersley testified in October 2003? I read that KPMG press release on the PBS Frontline website. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/tax/interviews/release.html
See also Hamersley Senate Finance Committee Testimony 003 TNT 204-35 online at http://finance.senate.gov/hearings/testimony/2003test/102103mhtest.pdf

Are you suggesting Hamersley and KPMG are in cahoots? Wow, that would be a bold strategy seeing as Hamersley sued the crap out of them. Case No. BC 297209, Los Angeles Superior Court (June 23, 2003.), also reported in Tax Notes Today full copy of complaint 2003 TNT 124-5