Putin general ‘dies suddenly’ aged 61 after he was set to become key witness in Kremlin corruption scandal

A TOP Putin crony who was to be a key witness in a major Kremlin corruption scandal has "suddenly" died under mysterious circumstances.

Russian general Magomed Khandayev, 61, was head of the State Expertise Directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defence.

Khandayev was seen as a key witness in a corruption scandal shrouding the Russian defence ministry amid Putin's illegal war against Ukraine.

His body was flown to Moscow to his home region of Dagestan for burial, according to reports.

Khandayev worked under deputy defence minister Timur Ivanov, 48, who was dramatically arrested on suspicion of £9 million corruption schemes - and remains in custody.

[hardspunned #23] Can you even begin to wrap your mind around the corruption in our trillion dollar a year, non audited, MIC boondoggle defense department?
[Gen.Blather #31] I don’t know where you got the idea it isn’t audited. I personally sat through numerous audits. They were efficient and thorough. Picture a personal tax audit but with ten auditors and more documentation than a person can carry.

The correct question is not whether the DoD has ever had an audit, but whether they have ever achieved a clean audit opinion.

https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-106941

DOD Financial Management:
Efforts to Address Auditability and Systems Challenges Need to Continue
GAO-23-106941
Published: Jul 13, 2023. Publicly Released: Jul 13, 2023.
DOD is the only large federal agency that has never achieved a "clean" audit opinion—which is when financial statements are presented fairly and consistent with accounting principles.
This testimony discusses challenges DOD faces in addressing its long-standing issues with:
Financial management
Business systems modernization
Overall operations
Its ability to achieve a clean audit opinion on its financial statements
For example, we've found that DOD hasn't created plans that have detailed procedures for addressing these known problems.
DOD's financial management and business systems modernization have been on our High Risk List since 1995.
What GAO Found
The Department of Defense (DOD) has been undergoing full-scope consolidated financial statement audits since fiscal year 2018. Although some smaller DOD components have been auditable, through fiscal year 2022, audits at the consolidated level and for many DOD components have resulted in disclaimers of opinion. This means that auditors were unable to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a basis for an audit opinion. Auditors have issued thousands of notices of findings and recommendations and identified material weaknesses.
GAO's prior work discussed how the financial statement audit has value far beyond the audit opinion, including helping to identify vulnerabilities and ways to improve operations. DOD audits have resulted in short- and long-term benefits. For example, as DOD reported in its June 2020 Financial Information and Audit Remediation report, the Navy identified and added nearly $2.4 billion of unrecorded inventory, operating materials and supplies, and general equipment. The Navy subsequently used those items to fill over 12,000 requisitions, which otherwise would have cost $50 million.
For more than 30 years, DOD has initiated a variety of efforts and undergone several organizational responsibility changes to help modernize its systems. However, in previous reviews GAO identified that these efforts and changes have not been fully successful to date. For example, in September 2020, GAO reported that DOD had a financial management systems strategy that did not fully address all the requirements for a comprehensive and effective IT strategic plan. Specifically, DOD did not include measures for tracking progress in achieving the strategy's goals. GAO recommended that DOD establish performance measures, including targets and time frames, and how it plans to measure values and verify and validate those values and a specific time frame for developing an enterprise roadmap to implement its strategy and ensure that it is developed.
DOD remains the only major federal agency that has never been able to achieve an unmodified (clean) audit opinion. Ongoing problems with its business and financial systems are key impediments to this effort, including outdated legacy systems. DOD management recognizes the risk legacy systems pose to its operations and related accounting, and is in the process of identifying, retiring, and replacing legacy systems.
DOD has also taken steps to address auditor-identified problems and work toward achieving a clean audit opinion, including developing audit priority areas, a financial management strategy, corrective action plans, and audit roadmaps. However, GAO's past work found that these plans lack details that are important to remediate material weaknesses. DOD lacks a comprehensive plan to establish a clear department-wide vision for how to achieve a clean audit opinion.
Addressing the challenges GAO and others have identified would help move DOD in the right direction to improve and oversee its systems and address audit findings. These are important steps toward achieving its goals for improved financial management and a clean audit opinion.
[...]

HOWEVER, the projects were regularly audited by the GAO. The audits were thorough and meticulous.

As the GAO found in 2023, "DOD is the only large federal agency that has never achieved a "clean" audit opinion—which is when financial statements are presented fairly and consistent with accounting principles."

The audits may have been thorough and meticulous, but DoD has never successfully passed one.

At the lower level, military accounting is great fun. The goal is always to spend everything allowed to prevent future claims that you could get by on less. That can be difficult with military contracts as they are usually adjustable due to later changes in conditions. The comptroller must have sufficient funds left over from Q4 to cover adjustments made in Q1 of the following fiscal year.

How to obligate >99% of funds ending Q4 and not run the risk of an accounting violation in Q1? That was done by creating bogus service contracts and keeping them on the books through the end of Q1. If funds were needed to cover a contract adjustment, a bogus service contract or two could be canceled. At the end of Q1, all the remaining bogus Q4 service contracts could be canceled. For achieving a 99% obligation rate without an accounting error, the comptroller may get an award.

End of fiscal year is also fun when the comptroller seeks to spend funds on anything and everything to get his obligation rate near 100%. Folks overseas seek out training courses available near home. Once authorized, the member gets leave in conjunction with orders, and gets free air travel both ways, does the training, enjoys leave, and checks in to return overseas. Once checked in to return, any delay is not leave time. None of the travel is leave time.

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