September 2013: Quarterly Report To Congress

“SIGIR’s successive congressional expansions and extensions proved profitable. Over nine-plus years of existence, the organization cost about $245 million to operate, while providing more than $1.8 billion in financial benefits, including nearly $645 million in direct savings from SIGIR’s audits and more than $192 million in seizures and court-ordered monetary penalties from SIGIR’s investigations. SIGIR’s professional staff completed 390 audits and inspections and executed investigations that led to 90 convictions. This string of productivity included 37 Quarterly Reports to the Congress and 37 testimonies on Capitol Hill. Importantly, the organization generated nine lessons-learned reports, the last of which, Learning From Iraq, suggested reforms that could strengthen the U.S. national security architecture and avert the kind of fraud, waste, and abuse that occurred too often during the Iraq stabilization and reconstruction operation (SRO).”

• See also via Neil Gordon/POGO:  “SIGIR warned that no one will ever know how the United States spent billions of dollars in Iraq over the past decade. According to SIGIR’s March 2013 audit report, at least $8 billion of the $53 billion spent up to that point was lost to fraud, waste, and abuse.”