The state department cannot account for $6 billion in paid bills. The contracts are missing. Did the contracts even exit? If not the money was stolen.
The US State Department is unable to explain how it spent billions of dollars worth of contract funds in areas throughout the world, according to a newly unveiled report by the department's internal watchdog. The Office of Inspector General explained in a March 20 “management alert” to department leaders that approximately $6 billion has gone unaccounted for over the past six years. The note said the number of missing documents “exposes the department to significant financial risk” and is a dangerous lack of oversight. “It creates conditions conducive to fraud, as corrupt individuals may attempt to conceal evidence of illicit behavior by omitting key documents from the contract file,” the inspector general wrote. “It impairs the ability of the Department to take effective and timely action to protect is interests and, in turn, those of taxpayers.”
The State Department plans to spend $400,000 in taxpayer dollars to purchase a camel statue for the new American embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. The sculpture by artist John Baldessari depicts a fiberglass camel staring into the eye of an oversized needle in play on a passage from the New Testament about the difficulty the wealthy have in entering heaven, BuzzFeed reported. According to a procurement document, the 500-pound, fiberglass, aluminum, stainless-steel, acrylic and painted "Camel Contemplating a Needle" will be displayed at the new embassy compound in Islamabad, which is estimated to be fully completed by 2016. “This artist’s product is uniquely qualified,” the document says. “Public art which will be presented in the new embassy should reflect the values of a predominantly Islamist country.” The department came under scrutiny in December after commissioning a $1 million sculpture to be installed at new building at the American embassy in London in 2017. The purchase was defended as a "good use" of the agency's resources.