Security contractor in Iraq
Corruption and waste has cost the US government billions of reconstruction dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to an official study on wartime contracting released on Thursday.
The report found that “criminal behavior and blatant corruption” were responsible for much of the waste related to the nearly $200 billion spent since 2002 on US reconstruction and other projects in the two countries.
Another estimate in the “Commission on Wartime Contracting” report found that losses to fraud alone in both war zones could be as high as $12 billion.
The commission called for a separate agency to oversee the different contractors currently overseen by the State Department, Pentagon and the US Agency for International Development (USAID).