The United States has possibly fraudulently handled some Iraqi money meant for rebuilding and poorly managed billions of dollars of US-funded contracts, according to US audits.
Two audits by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction found flaws in how US government and military officials ran contracts paid for by the Development Fund for Iraq - Iraqi money entrusted to the United States after the 2003 invasion.
A third audit looked at a small sample of US-funded projects paid for with $18.4 billion appropriated by Congress to rebuild Iraq and found sloppy and disorganised administration of some of those deals.
In one area of Iraq, nearly $100 million in cash used for rebuilding was unaccounted for. Incompetence by US procurement staff ranged from contractors being paid twice to files being misplaced.
"There was no assurance that fraud, waste and abuse did not occur," all three audits said. The most scathing criticism was in audits of the development fund, made up of proceeds from Iraqi oil sales, frozen assets from foreign governments and surplus from the UN Oil for Food programme.
Handling of that fund has already come under fire by previous US- and UN-mandated audits. An audit released by the Iraq reconstruction inspector in January concluded the United States had not properly safeguarded about $8.8 billion of Iraq's own money in the development fund.