The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad paid millions to a government contractor
for meals and snacks that nobody ate, according to a new internal State
Department report.
The State Department's Office of the Inspector General (OIG)
found
that the embassy overpaid by over $2 million, including over $1 million in
snacks alone. The funds went to contractor KBR, the former subsidiary of
Halliburton that runs food service for the over 1,500 employees of the world's
largest embassy complex.
"KBR's headcount
records from meals consumed do not match dining facility account records, and
OIG was unable to reconcile the difference. These discrepancies suggest that in
FY 2009 there were $2.23 million in unsupported food costs," the report
stated.
A significant part of the discrepancy was due to how people
are counted when they stop by what's called the "Grab-n-Go" snack stands at the
embassy. This resulted in $970,000 dollars paid to KBR it didn't deserve, the
report explained.
Partial blame lies with the embassy, according to the OIG.
For example, the embassy staff encouraged employees to sign in every time they
stopped by the snack areas, even if they were just picking up a cup of coffee
or going back for an apple. As a result, "it was not uncommon to see 6-8 scans
per individual for the same meal period. One person scanned his card 25 times
in two days."
The embassy management office even put up signs around the
embassy last year that read, "More scans = more goodies."
This practice resulted in inflated numbers being sent back
to the contractor. The contractor would then prepare more food based on those
numbers, resulting in higher overall costs to the embassy and the taxpayer.
The OIG criticized the embassy staff for encouraging this
type of behavior. "OIG calculates the
current embassy policy inflates the reported plate cost by 16 percent," the
report said.
But the OIG did not entirely exonerate KBR of blame. Its
report said that, while KBR provides a lot of data to the Defense Department, it
isn't in a form the Pentagon can use. Therefore, there's no way to tell if contractor staffing levels are correct and finding instances of waste and fraud
are more difficult.
The
embassy responded to the OIG by saying that its description of how the Grab-n-Go
stands work was "not completely accurate" and that the money paid to KBR is
based on the amount of food eaten, not the number of scans. Responding to
another of the OIG's criticisms -- that many non-authorized personnel were
eating at the facilities -- the embassy said that it would not refuse a meal to
any military or U.S. government employee.
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