路透社：审计发现美国国防部伪造了数万亿美元的账目

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-audit-army-idUSKCN10U1IG


The United States Army’s finances are so jumbled it had to make trillions of dollars of improper accounting adjustments to create an illusion that its books are balanced.
审计发现美军的账目非常混乱。为了符合开支账目甚至不惜修改了账目表，总数高达数万亿。

The Defense Department’s Inspector General, in a June report, said the Army made $2.8 trillion in wrongful adjustments to accounting entries in one quarter alone in 2015, and $6.5 trillion for the year. Yet the Army lacked receipts and invoices to support those numbers or simply made them up.
国防部检察长在一份6月的报告中指出，2015年一个季度内美军就对账目进行了多达2.8万亿的修改，全年高达6.5万亿。而且这些修改完全没有收据和发票登记，直接修改了财务报表。

As a result, the Army’s financial statements for 2015 were “materially misstated,” the report concluded. The “forced” adjustments rendered the statements useless because “DoD and Army managers could not rely on the data in their accounting systems when making management and resource decisions.”
因此，该报告指出，美军在2015年的财务决算报告是有“重大错误称述”的。这些人为修改表明财务决算报告完全是废纸，因为国防部不能基于该报告在人事和财务方面做出正确的决定。

Disclosure of the Army’s manipulation of numbers is the latest example of the severe accounting problems plaguing the Defense Department for decades.
美军造假账事件只是国防部数十年来几个重大审计问题之一而已。

The report affirms a 2013 Reuters series revealing how the Defense Department falsified accounting on a large scale as it scrambled to close its books. As a result, there has been no way to know how the Defense Department – far and away the biggest chunk of Congress’ annual budget – spends the public’s money.
该报告同时也表明，2013年路透社关于美军大规模伪造账目的系列报道是真实可信的。而且，正因为许多账目是伪造的，现在已经无从知晓国防部是如何花掉每一笔纳税人的钱的，而且这笔开支一直是国会预算中较大的一笔。

The new report focused on the Army’s General Fund, the bigger of its two main accounts, with assets of $282.6 billion in 2015. The Army lost or didn’t keep required data, and much of the data it had was inaccurate, the IG said.
新报告着重于总账，美军检察长指出，美军总账目在2015年有2826亿的账目丢失、不完整或者不准确。

“Where is the money going? Nobody knows,” said Franklin Spinney, a retired military analyst for the Pentagon and critic of Defense Department planning.
“这些钱去哪了？现在没人知道”，五角大楼一位退役的军事情报员Franklin Spinney如此批评。

The significance of the accounting problem goes beyond mere concern for balancing books, Spinney said. Both presidential candidates have called for increasing defense spending amid current global tension.
审计问题目前看来急需解决，不仅是账目需要核对，而且现在两位总统候选人都打算增加军费。

The Army account’s errors will likely carry consequences for the entire Defense Department.
军队账目的错误会给国防部带来一系列影响。

Congress set a September 30, 2017 deadline for the department to be prepared to undergo an audit. The Army accounting problems raise doubts about whether it can meet the deadline – a black mark for Defense, as every other federal agency undergoes an audit annually.
2017年9月30日是国会给每个部门设定的审计准备期限。美军账目的问题显然使它难以做好准备。

For years, the Inspector General – the Defense Department’s official auditor – has inserted a disclaimer on all military annual reports. The accounting is so unreliable that “the basic financial statements may have undetected misstatements that are both material and pervasive.”
多年来，美军检察长在年度报告中一直加入了免责声明，表示财务决算报告或许有未发现的错误，这些错误是严重的而且普遍的。

In an e-mailed statement, a spokesman said the Army “remains committed to asserting audit readiness” by the deadline and is taking steps to root out the problems.
在一份电子邮件的声明中，国防部发言人表示美军仍会按时完成审计准备，并开始着手解决问题。

The spokesman downplayed the significance of the improper changes, which he said net out to $62.4 billion. “Though there is a high number of adjustments, we believe the financial statement information is more accurate than implied in this report,” he said.
该发言人缩小了账目伪造的规模，表示只有624亿，还表示，财务决算报告绝对没有审计报告中说的那么不准确。

Jack Armstrong, a former Defense Inspector General official in charge of auditing the Army General Fund, said the same type of unjustified changes to Army financial statements already were being made when he retired in 2010.
前国防部检查官Jack Armstrong表示，在他退役的2010年的时候，决算报告就已经有问题了。

The Army issues two types of reports – a budget report and a financial one. The budget one was completed first. Armstrong said he believes fudged numbers were inserted into the financial report to make the numbers match.
美军完全是在根据预算报告来制作决算报告。

“They don’t know what the heck the balances should be,” Armstrong said.
他们也不知道账目是如何的。

Some employees of the Defense Finance and Accounting Services (DFAS), which handles a wide range of Defense Department accounting services, referred sardonically to preparation of the Army’s year-end statements as “the grand plug,” Armstrong said. “Plug” is accounting jargon for inserting made-up numbers.
一些国防部财务和会计局的雇员的工作就是向决算报告中插入伪造的数字。

At first glance adjustments totaling trillions may seem impossible. The amounts dwarf the Defense Department’s entire budget. Making changes to one account also require making changes to multiple levels of sub-accounts, however. That created a domino effect where, essentially, falsifications kept falling down the line. In many instances this daisy-chain was repeated multiple times for the same accounting item.
虽然一眼看去，修改数万亿的决算报表是不可能的，因为这超过了国防部的预算。这是因为修改报表中一个数字需要修改一系列报表，使整个账目吻合。因此同一份伪造数据在不同账目里被修改了多次。

The IG report also blamed DFAS, saying it too made unjustified changes to numbers. For example, two DFAS computer systems showed different values of supplies for missiles and ammunition, the report noted – but rather than solving the disparity, DFAS personnel inserted a false “correction” to make the numbers match.
检察长的报告也指责了国防部财务和会计局，认为他们做了不正当的修改。比如会计局的两个系统中，同一份弹药的支出不一样，他们不去解决二者的不同，反而插入了一条新的支出来使总支出相等。

DFAS also could not make accurate year-end Army financial statements because more than 16,000 financial data files had vanished from its computer system. Faulty computer programming and employees’ inability to detect the flaw were at fault, the IG said.
会计局现在也没法给出准确的年度军队决算报告，因为超过16000份财务文件消失了。也没法查证是软件错误还是雇员的问题。

DFAS is studying the report “and has no comment at this time,” a spokesman said.
一位国防部发言人表示，会计局目前在仔细研究审计报告，目前还没有进一步可透露的消息。




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数万亿美元20年未审计 五角大楼巨额军费竟是“糊涂账”

    美国五角大楼数万亿美元军费到底是怎么花的，竟然是笔糊涂账。据美国《商业内幕》8月2日援引美国《财政时报》的报道，美国国防部因其松散的审计工作而臭名昭著。在过去二十年中，就其数万亿美元防务开支，美国国防部从未完成过一次审计。这笔巨额资金究竟是如何花费于战争、装备、人事、住房、医疗和采购等领域的，根本没有明细账目。

　　美国国会对此已忍无可忍，要求军方在2017年9月30日前做好接受第一次审计的准备，以便更好地掌握军费开支情况。但五角大楼表示，这是一个不可能完成的任务。

　　审计系统混乱

　　上周，美国国防部总监察长发布一份最新报告，这份报告深刻披露了军队审计系统的混乱程度。报告指出，国防部下属的国防财务会计服务局未能就6.5万亿美元的军队普通基金交易数据的年终调整数提供详实的证明文件。

　　国防财务会计服务局为五角大楼文职和军事人员提供财务和会计服务。如支付国防部军人职工薪资、支付退休人员养老金以及负责五角大楼与其承包商、供应商的资金往来等。

　　报告并未显示国防财务会计服务局有挪用资金或携款潜逃的现象。但报告指出，在履行账务精确审计的职责上，国防财务会计服务局明显有失职之嫌。它未能及时追踪资金去向，也未就每个人的资金交易提供记账凭证，比如注明序列号、交易日期和支出数目。

　　报告撰写人、负责财务管理的总监察长助理维纳布尔表示，如果根据政府审计标准，会发现在2015财年的财务报表上，一笔2.8万亿美元的三季度调整数和一笔6.5万亿美元的军队普通基金交易数据年终调整数都没有明确的账务说明。

　　报表数据残缺

　　最新报告还发现一个难以解释的问题——有数千份应该存档的文件竟然没有存档。在2015财年第三季度的130万条记录中，至少有16513条记录被移除。但国防财务会计服务局对此没有给出任何解释或书面文件说明。结果导致这些原本将用来撰写2015财年第三季度和年终财务报表的数据变得残缺不全，可信度降低。

　　路透社调查记者帕特洛曾对五角大楼的财务欺诈和滥用行为极其愤怒，认为简直“不可理喻”。他曾撰文指出，整整二十年，美国军方从未进行过一次审计。“它们蔑视联邦法律，隐瞒了数以亿计因挥霍和欺诈而损失的资金。”

　　帕特洛还采访到一位国防部退休会计，从她口中得知了惊人的内幕。2011年退休的伍德福德在国防部做了15年会计。她透露，在长达15年的工作中，每月军队都会报来开支数据，但是这些数据不是有遗漏，就是明显有错误，军方也不会说明这些钱的来历和用途。最后，没有办法，伍德福德和她的同事只能在账目中插入虚假数字。

然并卵

skc 发表于 2016-8-20 13:26
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-audit-army-idUSKCN10U1IG