Bush Administration officials are openly hamstringing investigations into past due tax revenue collections from oil companies. Often even telling Interior Department investigators to drop the investigations on billions in back taxed owed by the Oil Companies.
Two officials were so concerned about being retaliated against for whsitleblowing that they filed suit under the False Claims Act- and guess what?
The Bushy irritants were removed from their jobs.
Prepared by the Interior Department’s inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, the report said that investigators found a "profound failure" in the agency’s technology for monitoring oil and gas payments.
It suggested that the agency was too cozy with oil companies and that internal critics had good reason to fear punishment.
"It demonstrates a Band-Aid approach to holding together one of the federal government’s largest revenue-producing operations," Mr. Devaney concluded.
So whadya know...the companies that were supposed to collect monies owed by oil companies have been stymied, blocked or intimidated at every turn by the Bushies.
Doesn’t that shock you?
When asked about this matter by investigators, the agency’s associate director, Lucy Querques Denett, responded, "How do you define hardship, just because they have a lot of money?"
The report was the latest result of a long series of investigations into the troubled federal program for collecting oil and gas royalties. Last year, Mr. Devaney told a Congressional hearing that "short of a crime, anything goes at the highest levels of the Department of the Interior."
Where
Is
The
Press?
Why is this issue not more important to Americans than OJ Simpson? What happened here? Why is this buried on a website somewhere and not being analyzed by the press the way they analyze an ad? Think about the billions they pocket and protect while America is at the mall.
The report, a result of a yearlong investigation, grew out of complaints by four auditors at the agency, who said that senior administration officials had blocked them from recovering money from oil companies that underpaid the government.
http://www.nytimes.com/...