The Army Thinks Printers Cost Over $1 Million

Poor accounting practices mean the Department of Defense can’t even tell how much money or equipment it has lost.

The Army failed to properly account for tens of millions of dollars’ worth of equipment, according to the Department of Defense’s (DOD) internal watchdog.

A report released last week by the DOD Office of the Inspector General detailed the results of a recent audit of military bases in Kuwait. Specifically, the audit intended “to determine whether the Army effectively accounted for Government-furnished property (GFP).”

The audit focused on two bases, Camp Arifjan and Camp Buehring. In 2010, a contractor (not named in the report) was awarded a $75 million contract to provide operations and security support to both bases, including “food and housing, payroll support, fire protection, security protection, law enforcement, and transportation.” The contract was extended multiple times, totaling more than $5 billion over more than a decade.

According to the contractor’s records, in that time it received more than $108 million in GFP from the Army, such as “printers, refrigeration units, and vehicles.” But the audit found that according to the Army’s records, it had given the contractor nearly $157 million worth of equipment. And counterintuitively, despite its total dollar amount being about 50 percent higher, the Army recorded having provided 23,000 fewer individual items. – READ MORE