May 15, 2004: Dispersal of $2 Billion in Iraq Funds Dispursed by CPA, No Record of Actual Recipients

The Program Review Board—a panel of US, allied, and Iraqi officials responsible for allocating Iraqi budgetary resources under control of the Coalition Provisional Authority—approves the distribution of $2 billion for reconstruction projects in Iraq. It is one of the largest disbursements recorded. But the only record of how the funds are disbursed are the minutes of the meeting which list and describe which reconstruction sector the funds are being allocated to. They do not include any information about the actual recipients of the funds. The minutes show that a “[r]epresentative from [Britain] noted there was insufficient detail on some of the requests and there was no reference to recurring costs for operations and maintenance.” [Coalition Provisional Authority, 5/15/2004; US Congress, 2/6/2007, pp. 15 ]