Inspector General claims US Army can’t account for trillions of dollars
In a report released earlier this summer, the Department of Defense Inspector General has determined that the Army's finances are a world-class mess. Reportedly, the service made $2.8 trillion in adjustments to make their books balance just in one quarter of 2015 in spite of the fact that the entire defense budget for that fiscal year was $585 billion.
According to Reuters, the Army's books are so jumbled that they may be impossible to audit – and the Army is facing a September 30, 2017 deadline to be ready for one. The harsh IG report concluded the Army "materially misstated" its financial statements for 2015.
Making the task of squaring the Army's books harder is the fact that over 16,000 documents have vanished from the Army's computer system. The Defense Finance and Accounting Services (DFAS), the Pentagon's primary agency responsible for accounting services, routinely changed numbers without justification at the end of the year, something employees of that agency referred to as the "grand plug."
"Where is the money going? Nobody knows," DOD critic and retired analyst Franklin Spinney told Reuters.
The Army has taken issue with the IG report, claiming that the total discrepancies total just under $62.5 billion. An Army spokesman said, "Though there is a high number of adjustments, we believe the financial statement information is more accurate than implied in this report," that and that the Army "remains committed to asserting audit readiness" and that steps are being taken to root out the problems.
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