The flow of cash for the supply of weapons to Ukraine puts the Pentagon's supervisory authority on alert. Billions of dollars spent on arming Ukraine have caused concern to Pentagon Inspector General Sean O'Donnell, Bloomberg reports.
He did not rule out the leakage of systems and ammunition supplied to Kiev to the black market.
Anthony Capacio (AnthonyCapaccio)While the Pentagon is rushing to replenish stocks of weapons worth billions of dollars sent to Ukraine, its Inspector General says he is ready for signs of fraud and abuse in thousands of contracts concluded.
"We have developed a universe of thousands of contracts related to Ukraine,” each of which amounts to at least $2 million, Acting Inspector General Sean O'Donnell said in an interview. This is more than 7800 contracts worth a total of $2.2 billion, he added, without even touching on the approaching flow of large orders for modern weapons such as long-range HIMARS missile systems.
The Inspector General's oversight will focus on additional spending on Ukraine in the amount of $26.6 billion approved by Congress since last year, which has led to a reduction in weapons stocks [in the US itself].
In addition to analyzing the effectiveness of the Pentagon's accounting systems for accounting and tracking expenses related to Ukraine, the Inspector General's office plans to study US intelligence sharing agreements with allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the effectiveness of training Ukrainian forces and the possibility of leakage of military equipment to the black market.
NATO officials "seem confident that the security was quite sufficient for the transfer of weapons," and "as far as we can tell, right now they are using one hundred percent everything that should shoot and explode," O'Donnell said. But he added that "it needs to be checked" with the help of an audit.
A Pentagon spokesman told reporters last week that this unit has very detailed accountability measures in place to ensure that monitoring will begin as soon as the Pentagon gets permission to do so. This control will include shipment from the United States, crossing the Ukrainian border, and then delivery to military units. According to the official, the Pentagon, the US European Command and the new office of the military attache in Kiev are involved in tracking.
O'Donnell said the system should be tested because Ukrainian officials keep records of American equipment using "handwritten receipts, all on paper." According to him, as soon as the weapons get to Ukraine, "I don't think they have much accuracy" as to where they end up.
In June, O'Donnell led a team to Germany to meet with officials from the U.S. European Command and its Inspector General to quantify surveillance problems.
Lessons of pandemiiO'
Donnell said the lesson learned from the Defense Department's hasty spending at the start of the coronavirus pandemic on logistics such as ventilators and masks is that "as the speed of spending increases, the likelihood of fraud increases." According to him, the Inspector General's focus "is on the whole spectrum of fraud in the conclusion of government contracts, including collusion, the parties of which should be excluded from participation," the submission of proposals with erroneous prices and improper documentation.
O'Donnell said his office "has learned from experience that maintaining complete documentation of contracts, grants and projects is critical to effective performance and effective oversight," as "the lack of quality documentation has had a detrimental impact on many of our investigations in Afghanistan and Iraq." He said that his employees use "this lesson when planning and conducting extensive work on Ukraine."
According to him, data analysis experts working with auditors and criminal investigators use specialized software tools, which allows them to "use a much richer set of data and study more deeply" the process of concluding contracts for signs of fraud or collusion in order to obtain a contract.
