Report: VHA accounting system ripe for fraud

[unhappycamper]

Source: Army Times

Report: VHA accounting system ripe for fraud
By Cristian Hernandez - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Aug 1, 2008 5:36:25 EDT

The accounting system used by the Veterans Health Administration is ripe for fraud because of an outdated method for recording miscellaneous expenses, a congressional watchdog agency warned Thursday.

However, a yearlong review by the Government Accountability Office did not turn up any fraud, just a 60-year-old bookkeeping method that often provides too little information to know if the purchases were proper and actually arrived. In some cases, one person was in charge of the entire transaction, providing no review to ensure the purchase was legitimate, GAO found.

Kay Delay, acting director of financial management assurance for GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, said the Department of Veterans Affairs did not require key pieces of information to be included in spending reports and that there was a lack of oversight by officials. In some cases, the documentation for an expense was incomplete, omitting even the name of the vendor, she said.

Delay said the lack of oversight “increases the risk that unscrupulous employees will use funds for unintended purposes.”

Read more: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/07/military_vha_accounting_073108w/

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In case the above doesn't work: http://tinyurl.com/5tg9t2

[flashl]

1. Scratching head, the Pentagon with 13 accounting systems lose trillions, no problems. nt