Auditors

In 2005 and 2006, the Defense Contract Audit Agency helped enable Boeing to recover about $270 million in losses from a failed commercial satellite business, approving unorthodox accounting methods that allowed the company to receive the payments through an Air Force contract, according to testimony to be presented to a congressional panel today. When veteran auditors at the DCAA pointed out potential violations of federal acquisition regulations, they were repeatedly told by supervisors to ignore them, according to the...

NEW YORK — As investors Carl Icahn and William Ackman bickered loudly on TV this year about their opposing bets on Herbalife, two other men were discussing the company in a different context: obtaining non-public information to trade ahead of the stock's next move. Referring to Icahn's announcement that he had purchased a large stake in the nutritional-products company, one of the men said: "I wish you would've known that he was going to release that, and we could've made some money.

The problem described in your Feb. 7 front-page article " 5 colleges' inflated data spark debate on rankings " is not new. It has surfaced many times over the past 20 years, and it will not go away until colleges and universities are required to submit to independent auditors the data they wish to provide to ranking agencies or publish on their Web sites. Texas Christian University is to be commended for doing so without being required. I was a college president for 12 years, and I know the intense pressure from trustees, alumni,...

NEW YORK — The accounting firm KPMG has resigned as the auditor for nutrition company Herbalife and shoe retailer Skechers after a rogue partner allegedly leaked information about the companies to someone who used it to trade stocks. KPMG said it fired the partner and has no reason to believe that there were any problems with the financial reports for Herbalife or Skechers. Skechers said KPMG told it that the ex-partner provided the inside information in exchange for money and is under federal investigation.

In the long shadow of Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme , financial regulators on Wednesday continued closing barn doors after the horses had left. The Securities and Exchange Commission proposed rules to make it harder for brokerage firms to pull off frauds like Madoff's, in which billions of dollars of investments purportedly held for clients never existed. First, the agency wants to tighten the audits of brokerage firms. Second, it wants to give itself and other regulators access to records of the outside auditors and the right...

A rush by the Energy Department to use stimulus money to modernize the country's power grid has left the system vulnerable to cyberattacks, the agency's internal watchdog found. Inspector General Gregory H. Friedman found "shortcomings" in the cybersecurity plans of more than a third of the utility companies that got federal funding for "smart grid" projects — from incomplete strategies to prevent an attack to vague steps for stopping one if it started. "Without a formal...

Dozens of federal programs to help Americans with disabilities find jobs are fragmented and overlapping, potentially making services for this vulnerable population inefficient and wasteful, government auditors reported . Even with at least $4 billion a year allocated by nine federal agencies to employment programs, the government does little to measure whether the efforts are putting the disabled to work, how long those workers stay employed and...

State auditors have determined that more than 30 Prince George's County police recruits caught up in a cheating scandal do not need to be removed from the streets because there were no "substantive issues" with their training, authorities said. The audit did not specifically address whether the cadets received test answers from an instructor. But Prince George's police internal affairs investigators and state auditors determined that even if they did, they...

D.C. employees were able to change dates and override internal controls on computerized tax records, approving a tax refund in one case after a three-year filing deadline had passed, according to a previously undisclosed internal report that describes a fresh round of problems in the city's embattled Office of Tax and Revenue. That report and two others were obtained by The Washington Post this week through a public-records request just days after the D.C. Council unanimously...

In the five-year struggle to finish the war in Iraq, military leaders and their troops have said a particular weapon is among the most effective in their arsenal: American cash. Soldiers walk the streets carrying thousands of dollars to pay Iraqis for doorways battered in American raids and limbs lost during firefights. Sheiks appeal to commanders to use larger pools of money locked away in Humvees and safes at military bases for new schools, health clinics, water treatment plants and generators, knowing that the...

The former top auditor for the Prince William County government has been accused of stealing more than $30,000. The victim? A D.C.-based association of auditors. Robin Howard — who once headed the Prince William office intended to ferret out financial mismanagement — was indicted this week on six counts of embezzlement. A judge issued a warrant for his arrest. Larry Keller, a former colleague, said that Howard had done "a lot of good" for Prince William and that he found it difficult to...

The problem described in your Feb. 7 front-page article " 5 colleges' inflated data spark debate on rankings " is not new. It has surfaced many times over the past 20 years, and it will not go away until colleges and universities are required to submit to independent auditors the data they wish to provide to ranking agencies or publish on their Web sites. Texas Christian University is to be commended for doing so without being required. I was a college president for 12 years, and I know the intense pressure from...

The military does not always do enough to respond to victims of sexual assault, according to a report released Tuesday, a week after Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta announced that he was lifting the official ban on women in combat. The report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that doctors, nurses and other military health-care providers are inconsistent in how they handle reports of sexual assault, mostly because guidance is lacking. Required refresher training for...

He was supposed to be a faceless accountant, but he has become a household name in India and perhaps the central actor in the nation's battle against corruption. The slim, silver-haired Vinod Rai is the government's chief auditor, a man appointed on the recommendation of the prime minister more than five years ago. Now he has turned into one of the government's greatest scourges, a hero to many but a source of controversy to others. Rai's reports accusing the government of losing tens of billions of...

The International Monetary Fund, at the urging of the United States, shaped recent research to pressure China over its economic policies, according to a study released Wednesday by the fund's in-house watchdog. The report by the IMF's Independent Evaluation Office provides an unusual look at how the political priorities of the fund's major members can influence what is ostensibly objective analysis by an apolitical organization. Divisions within the IMF, largely between industrialized countries...

The Prince William Board of County Supervisors is expected to vote Tuesday to eliminate the county's internal auditor department and outsource the work to a contractor, a move that critics charge would deprive the county of an internal, independent watchdog. In a strongly worded memo , the county's auditing department said the plan would undercut the county's credibility and bring in outsiders who are not familiar with the complicated workings of the government, which has an operating budget of...

A defense contractor that supplied vehicle parts for the Iraqi army sought reimbursements from the U.S. military far in excess of the cost of the items, according to a new report by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction . The contractor, Aecom Government Services , charged $237 for a vehicle side mirror that was supposed to cost $14.88, according to the report. The company also submitted invoices to the U.S. military in Iraq seeking reimbursements of $196.50 for a bag of 10 washers that was...

The inspector general for the Defense Department said yesterday that the Pentagon cannot account for almost $15 billion worth of goods and services ranging from trucks, bottled water and mattresses to rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns that were bought from contractors in the Iraq reconstruction effort. The Pentagon did not have the proper documentation, including receipts, vouchers, signatures, invoices or other paperwork, for $7.8 billion that American and Iraqi contractors were paid for phones, folders, paint, blankets,...

Sue Taeuber, 81, an auditor who retired from the Department of Education in 2001, died of cancer Nov. 1 at her home in Arlington County. Her daughter Karen Chamblee confirmed her death. Sue Harris Shugart was born in Elkin, N.C. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a degree in mathematics in 1951. Her 29-year federal career began at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, but for most of it, she was with the Department of Education. At retirement, she was assigned to the office of the inspector general.

D.C. employees were able to change dates and override internal controls on computerized tax records, approving a tax refund in one case after a three-year filing deadline had passed, according to a previously undisclosed internal report that describes a fresh round of problems in the city's embattled Office of Tax and Revenue. That report and two others were obtained by The Washington Post this week through a public-records request just days after the D.C. Council unanimously agreed to require...