Afghanistan: U.S. Bought Diesel Fuel for $500 Per Gallon
October 24th, 2013Via: CNN:
That was the exorbitant figure paid with U.S. tax dollars to a contractor building a hospital in rural Afghanistan, according to a report from the government watchdog tasked with investigating expenditures on Afghanistan’s reconstruction.
In the report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the International Organization for Migration was found to lack sufficient internal controls able to detect overpayments of at least $507,000 to the contractor it hired to build a 100-bed hospital in the town of Gardez.
It was part of a project begun in July 2008 in a cooperative agreement between the United States International Agency for Development and IOM.
The examples of oversight ineptitude are staggering.
The inspector general found one case where IOM paid the contractor, Sayed Bilal Sadath Construction Company, $300,000 for 600 gallons of diesel fuel – a cost of $500 per gallon.
In another instance, IOM was found to have paid $220,000 for an automatic temperature control device that the audit said should have cost between $2,000 and $10,000.
“IOM officials did not identify either of these discrepancies when making payments to SBSCC,” the report said. “In addition, USAID never identified the overpayments and reimbursed IOM for these payments made to SBSCC.”
