Energy Dept. 'Unable to Locate' $500,000 in Equipment"

[Mike Mercury]

Energy Dept. 'Unable to Locate' $500,000 in Equipment Bought With Stimulus Money
An audit conducted by the Energy Department’s Office of Inspector General was "unable to locate" $500,000 worth of equipment purchased with stimulus money by a recipient of funds distributed through the deparment's “Advanced Batteries and Hybrid Components Program,” according to an audit report published by the OIG.

The DOE said it would not be "appropriate" to release the name of stimulus-money recipient where the $500,000 worth of equipment could not be located.

The program was given nearly $2 billion in stimulus funds "to support the construction of U.S. based battery and electric drive component
manufacturing plants."

One of the three “conclusions and observations” the OIG made in the report is that more should be done to “ensure recipients adequately safeguard equipment purchased with federal funds,” the audit states.

“We were unable to locate equipment purchased by one recipient totaling about $500,000,” the audit states.

In an expanded section of the audit entitled “Safeguarding Assets,” it states: “While recipients were required to have property accountability systems in place, one of the three recipients we reviewed had not maintained records detailing information such as the location of equipment purchased with Recovery Act funds. “we were unable to locate 20 of the 37 equipment items sampled."

This is the second audit conducted by OIG on the program. The first was in April 2010. The office said a “follow-up” audit was necessary, in part, because it wanted to evaluate “circumstances related to an allegation received by the Office of Inspector General that an employee of one recipient had unduly influenced procurement decisions and violated conflict of interest provisions.”

When asked by CNSNews.com for the name of the “recipient” that could not account for the $500,000 in equipment, the following statement was provided by the OIG:

“The focus of the audit was based on Department of Energy’s policy and implementation. It is not appropriate to disclose company names.”

[onedef92]

I'm not surprised....

[Mike Mercury]

Originally Posted by onedef92

I'm not surprised....

“We were unable to locate equipment purchased by one recipient totaling about $500,000,” the audit states.

It is not appropriate to disclose company names.”

not surprising either. This smells of a political payoff system; not necessarily a method to create new jobs.

[73sbVert]

Originally Posted by Mike Mercury

not surprising either. This smells of a political payoff system; not necessarily a method to create new jobs.

Ya think?? It's not like this whole administration hasn't been rife with all sorts of corruption since day 1 or anything...





Those Dems elected THE stupidest Mtherfker and THE most corrupt POS's in the whole country to lead, and look where we're at now. Damn I can't wait for November.

[Datawiz]

Disgusting, but not surprising.

[Mike Mercury]

Originally Posted by 73sbVert

Those Dems elected THE stupidest Mtherfker and THE most corrupt POS's in the whole country to lead, and look where we're at now. Damn I can't wait for November.

and the cult requires them to support their own & provide damage control... no matter what. Heck, they'd diss one of their own children - before bad-mouthing a fellow party member.

Oh, almost forgot...

[Stangkiller]

That's 17 assets at $30k a piece. Hardly a big deal. It's probably GE or a similar company, the assets are probably Volts or Prii, and the assets probably exist, there's probably just no easy way to identify which location those specific assets went to. I'm really not seeing a story here.

[jda67gta]

Originally Posted by Stangkiller

That's 17 assets at $30k a piece. Hardly a big deal. It's probably GE or a similar company, the assets are probably Volts or Prii, and the assets probably exist, there's probably just no easy way to identify which location those specific assets went to. I'm really not seeing a story here.

WTF?

We have to account for every item purchased with any form of Federal Funds. The City, State or Feds check every year.

Hope you're just kidding.

[Mike Mercury]

Originally Posted by jda67gta

have to account for every item purchased with any form of Federal Funds.

not when the president is a democrat.

[Luke@tirerack]

Originally Posted by Mike Mercury

not surprising either. This smells of a political payoff system; not necessarily a method to create new jobs.

just more politics chicago style

[Stangkiller]

Originally Posted by jda67gta

WTF?

We have to account for every item purchased with any form of Federal Funds. The City, State or Feds check every year.

Hope you're just kidding.

Not really. If they have the assets, but were unwilling to point to those assets...and or sold the assets during a downsizing...it's just missing paperwork and not really missing assets.

$500,000 out of 2,000,000,000 is .00025.

I have faith, companies aren't just losing $500k worth of assets...they know exactly where their assets are. Now paperwork the government asks for on the other hand.

[nate99]

I've been through the books of some of the largest companies on the planet. Every one of them would look after $500k of missing gear. Every paper flipping clerk knows that he can justify his existence for 10 years if he finds it.

Only .gov breezes that crap away.

[thegreenman]

Reminds me of an incident that happened just last week. One government agency arrived to inventory some equipment on site and left without finding any of their equipment on the list. Local guys came to us wanting to raise hell for the missing equipment, I walked into server room and pointed to the missing equipment. Funny thing their records showed the correct row but wrong racks, if they had just spent a few seconds walking down the row, the missing equipment would have been found.

[Doug28450]

Power washers?

[jda67gta]

Originally Posted by Stangkiller

Not really. If they have the assets, but were unwilling to point to those assets...and or sold the assets during a downsizing...it's just missing paperwork and not really missing assets.

$500,000 out of 2,000,000,000 is .00025.

I have faith, companies aren't just losing $500k worth of assets...they know exactly where their assets are. Now paperwork the government asks for on the other hand.

Trust but verify. If you can't show the assets, and the paperwork required, you are out of compliance.

That means you have violated the terms of the government contract executed when you received the Federal Funds that were supposed to be used to purchase the equipment.

If you can't put your hands on the equipment, how do you know the money was spent to purchase them? For all your "faith" the cash may have ended up on the company owner's girlfriends finger.