Watchdog: Military blew $43M on invalid gas station

WASHINGTON — U.S. taxpayers footed a check for a $43 million natural-gas stuffing hire in Afghanistan, a boondoggle that should have cost $500,000 and has probably no value to normal Afghans, a supervision watchdog for reformation in Afghanistan announced Monday.

A Pentagon charge force awarded a $3 million agreement to build a hire in Sheberghan, Afghanistan, though finished adult spending $12 million in construction costs and $30 million in “overhead” between 2011 and 2014, a Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) found. Meanwhile, a identical gas station built in adjacent Pakistan cost $500,000.

“It’s tough to suppose a some-more vast rubbish of income than building an choice fuel hire in a war-torn nation that costs 8,000% some-more than it should, and is too dangerous for a watchdog to determine either it is even operational,” Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., pronounced in a statement. “Perhaps equally vast however, is that a Pentagon has apparently shirked a shortcoming to entirely comment for a taxpayer income that’s been squandered — an unsuitable miss of clarity that I’ll be entirely investigating.”

The compressed-natural gas hire was designed to uncover a viability of drumming a country’s healthy gas reserves. But a examiner ubiquitous dynamic that Pentagon’s Task Force for Stability and Business Operations unsuccessful to control a feasibility investigate before rising a project.

If they had, a examiner ubiquitous remarkable in his report, a Pentagon would have found most Afghans have small use for it. The Pentagon’s possess executive settled that converting a car to dense healthy gas costs $700 in Afghanistan. The normal annual income there is $690.

In a minute to a examiner general, a Pentagon remarkable that it had shuttered a charge force progressing this year and would try to find officials to answer questions. The charge force had been given $800 million to assistance encourage private investment in Afghanistan.

“As recently as Oct 13, 2015, SIGAR contacted (the Department of Defense) to pronounce to these unnamed employees, though DoD again unsuccessful to brand anyone,” according to a examiner general’s report.

McCaskill, in a minute to a Pentagon, demanded to know how a income was spent and either a stuffing hire is still open for business. She remarkable that a executive obliged for gripping a pumps running failed to replenish a handling permit usually 6 months after it opened.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., who, like McCaskill, sits on a Armed Services Committee, also demanded answers from a Pentagon.

“At a time of flourishing threats and compelled invulnerability budgets, this kind of mismanagement is simply unacceptable, and we demeanour brazen to conference from a Pentagon on what specific stairs it will take to forestall such an gross rubbish of taxation dollars in a future,” Ayotte pronounced in a statement. “Our infantry and a taxpayers merit better.”

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