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And the hits just keep on comin’! Late yesterday, in a day filled with all sorts of development in the Fani Willis scandal, yet another shoe dropped in the saga. After evidence emerged that Willis-appointed special prosecutor Nathan Wade did indeed spend some of the money Willis paid him for her travel and vacations, the Fulton County Audit Committee has now taken an interest in the case. County commissioner and committee chair Bob Ellis sent a letter to Willis demanding to know if she benefited from the taxpayer funds she directed to Wade. Because if she did, well … that’s...

As many Americans who waited until the last minute will likely rediscover this weekend, filing federal taxes is a complicated and frustrating task. No matter how much care is taken, mistakes happen—and fairly often. During the 2021 tax filing season, for example, the IRS "suspended and reviewed 35 million returns with errors," according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which annually reviews the IRS' performance and makes recommendations for improvement. Those errors can be the result of taxpayers failing to include a necessary form or complete information, though they can also be the results of mistakes...

Ernst & Young, one of the top accounting firms in the world, is being fined $100 million by federal regulators after admitting its employees cheated on their ethics exams. For years, the firm's auditors had cheated to pass key exams that are needed for certified public accountant licenses, the Securities and Exchange Commission found. Ernst & Young also had internal reports about the cheating but didn't disclose the wrongdoing to regulators during the investigation. "It's simply outrageous that the very professionals responsible for catching cheating by clients cheated on ethics exams of all things," Gurbir S. Grewal, director of the...

Lawsuits filed Thursday in Clark, Snohomish and Whatcom counties claim the auditors in each of those counties “flipped votes,” kept illegal records of voters by political party, defied public records laws and, in some cases, used unverified election equipment during the November 2020 election. The suits were filed by the Washington Election Integrity Coalition United with an additional 28 individuals — including congressional candidate Joe Kent, Patriot Prayer founder Joey Gibson and Yacolt Town Council member Michelle Dawson — signing on as plaintiffs. Kent is challenging Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Battle Ground, for her 3rd Congressional District seat. Attempts to...

Observers of the audit in Winham, New Hampshire have identified numerous actions by the audit team that are very suspect. One such observation is that the auditors backdated machines under review and then performed other suspicious actions. We reported two days ago that the three auditors selected for the Windham audit are conflicted with connections to Pelosi and Schumer. Because of these obvious conflicts, this audit was over before it started.

Officials in Maricopa County, Arizona, are refusing to comply with subpoenas from the state Senate that require them to turn over routers or router images to auditors reviewing the November 2020 election, saying that surrendering the items will cause a "significant security risk" to local law enforcement. "We had previously believed that the risk would be eliminated by redacting the law enforcement data on the routers and not producing it. But we were informed that redaction did not eliminate the risk," Deputy County Attorney Joseph LaRue said in a letter this week to Senate Audit Liaison Ken Bennett, reports The...

Hospitals are putting more patients into observation status for longer than 48 hours instead admitting them, in part out of fear of what happened at one hospital this month, the American Hospital Association says. Observation status is a Medicare billing category for patients not sick enough to qualify for acute admission but too sick to be sent home. Fear of Recovery Audit Contractor audits, or "post-payment reviews of inpatient claims" has been partly responsible, said Rick Pollack, AHA executive vice president, in a letter to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services chief operating officer Marilyn Tavenner on Wednesday. "A related...

Given Russia's reputation for excessive bureaucracy, it's only right that a company would exist to help businesspeople to set up, find the right translators, and also provide the right legal guidance to navigate the Byzantine direction of Russia's business bureaucracy. Center of Economic Planning consists of a professional team of skilled translators, auditors and IT specialists who will also not just help foreign businesses, but also help native Russians build their businesses.

Looking for inside questions to ask non-partisan candidates like judges, auditors and county commissioners.

WASHINGTON – The government must toughen its monitoring of the $700 billion financial bailout to ensure that banking institutions limit their top executives' pay and comply with other restrictions, federal auditors said Tuesday in the first comprehensive review of the rescue package. The Treasury Department has no mechanism in place to track how institutions are using $150 billion in taxpayer money that the government injected into the banking system as of last month, the Government Accountability Office concluded in its report to Congress. The auditors acknowledged that the program, created Oct. 3 to help stabilize a rapidly faltering banking system,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. auditors urged the Air Force Wednesday to rerun its marathon, $35 billion competition for refueling aircraft, upholding a protest by losing bidder Boeing Co (BA.N). The Government Accountability Office found the Air Force made "a number of significant errors that could have affected the outcome of what was a close competition between" Boeing and Northrop Grumman Corp (NOC.N). "We therefore sustained Boeing's protest," Michael Golden, head of the a GAO bid protest unit, said in a statement. Northrop was teamed with EADS, parent of rival passenger-jet maker Airbus. EADS (EAD.PA) had no immediate comment. --snip-- The...

The United Nations' Cash for Kim Jong Il scandal is now six months old, so it's a good time to assess progress, if that's the right word. The evidence of misdeeds at the U.N. Development Program in North Korea continues to mount, but there's still no "urgent" and "external" inquiry, as ordered by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in January. Now the U.S. has uncovered evidence that in addition to transferring millions of dollars in cash that may have gone to help prop up Kim's grotesque regime, the UNDP also transferred dual-use technology. It did so without bothering to secure a U.S....

State auditors Tuesday criticized California's $3 billion stem-cell institute for lax travel and entertainment rules that let its officials sometimes get chauffeured rental cars, pricey meals and first-class air fare. The report by California State Auditor Elaine Howle also faulted the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine for using questionable data in justifying its salaries, which in some cases seemed excessive to the auditors. In addition, the report said, the institute offered vague reasoning for its policies governing how much revenue and other benefits the state should receive from those who develop products from the institute's stem-cell grants. Moreover, the report...

SAN FRANCISCO — The University of California's regents took further steps Thursday to try to resolve its long-running controversy over executive compensation, in many cases by giving retroactive approvals for deals previously granted without the required board signoff or disclosure. The corrective actions came in response to several audits last spring that detailed scores of instances in which UC leaders had failed to follow their own policies in granting additional pay or benefits to top managers. In most, the extras were provided without explicit regent approval. Those audits followed media reports that the university system had given millions in bonuses,...

I.R.S. to Cut Tax AuditorsBy DAVID CAY JOHNSTON Published: July 23, 2006 The federal government is moving to eliminate the jobs of nearly half of the lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service who audit tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans, specifically those who are subject to gift and estate taxes when they transfer parts of their fortunes to their children and others. The administration plans to cut the jobs of 157 of the agency’s 345 estate tax lawyers, plus 17 support personnel, in less than 70 days. Kevin Brown, an I.R.S. deputy commissioner, confirmed the cuts after The...

Gubernatorial candidate Steve Westly said Friday he'll unleash an expanded team of auditors to "wring the inefficiency" out of state government and help close a $5 billion budget shortfall if he is elected California's top executive. In a meeting with The Bee's Capitol Bureau, Westly, the state controller and the new leading Democratic gubernatorial contender, came across as a candidate for accountant-in-chief as he sketched out financial charts and figures on an easel board. The former eBay executive proposed increasing the number of state auditors by nearly one-fifth - from 210 to 250 - and said he would seek additional...

California auditors uncovered state employees submitting false expense reports, sleeping on the job, getting paid for unperformed work and living rent-free on state property, according to a report released Tuesday. In the state's latest semi-annual report on whistle-blower complaints, the Bureau of State Audits pinpointed at least eight cases of employee or agency misconduct between July and December of last year, costing the state $250,000 or more. The bureau has seen a sharp increase in complaints since 2002, when a law took effect requiring state agencies to notify employees about California's whistle-blower hotline. "It's very helpful because there have been...