GAO: U.S. Cash For Cuba Was Misspent

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WASHINGTON — Nearly all of the $74 million a federal agency has spent to promote democracy in Cuba over the past decade has been distributed without competitive bidding or oversight in a program that opened the door to waste and fraud, according to a report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office.

In one of the more extreme cases of apparent abuse, the GAO said a Miami-based group used the money to purchase “a gas chainsaw, computer gaming equipment and software (including Nintendo Game Boys and Sony PlayStations), a mountain bike, leather coats, cashmere sweaters, crab meat, and Godiva chocolates.”

The group said in its application to the U.S. Agency for International Development that it needed the money “to provide humanitarian assistance and information to (Cuban) dissidents and their families.” The director of the grant recipient, Accion Democratica Cubana, told the Miami Herald that all the luxury items — but not the chainsaw — were sent to Cuba. But GAO author David Gootnick said the lack of documentation made that impossible to determine.

Rep. Jeff Flake, a Republican of Arizona, who requested the GAO audit along with Rep. William Delahunt, a Democrat of Massachusetts, said the lack of oversight and failure to follow government rules led to creation of a money trough that existed largely to provide jobs and operating funds to Miami-based opponents of Cuba’s communist government.

“I think that this administration and to some extent the last wanted simply to curry favor with the Cuban American exile community,” Mr. Flake said.


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