Jul 28 2004
Your Tax Dollars Hard at Work - Halliburton
It seems everyone’s favorite defense contactor has a wee accounting problem:
Halliburton Co. has lost $18.6 million of government property in Iraq, about a third of the items it was given to manage, including trucks, computers and office furniture, government auditors claim.
The auditors couldn’t account for 6,975 of 20,531 items on the ledgers of Halliburton’s KBR unit, according to a report by Stuart Bowen, auditor for the coalition provisional authority inspector general. - Houston Chronical
Never mind asking silly questions like, “How, exactly, do you just go and lose things like trucks?”, or “How come when I can’t account for a $2.43 deduction on last years income taxes, the IRS wants to throw me in prison?”. Instead, just rest assured that your tax dollars are hard at work playing a key role in rebuilding Iraq, one lost piece of office furniture at a time.
If you think that’s bad, they just had a big conference here last week. The focus: there are $2 Billion (with a B!) worth of stuff sitting over there (literally in a big pile), and no one has a clue who they belong to or what to do with them.