The Army has initiated a review of a former West Point chief of staff after the Pentagon’s top investigator discovered that he implemented accounting activities that exposed the Army financial coffers to waste, fraud and abuse.
Army Secretary John McHugh ordered the review in December, nearly a month before Pentagon Inspector General Jon Rymer made public in a Jan. 14 report the military academy’s failure to comply with an Army directive to use an automated accounting system, known as General Fund Enterprise Business Systems.
Instead, under the direction of former West Point Chief of Staff Col. Charles Stafford, academy personnel used a commercial checking account to manage gift funds and appointed 108 disbursing officers to manage those funds, without Defense Department approval.
Chief West Point spokesman Lt. Col. Webster Wright dismissed concerns that the academy’s unapproved accounting methods had attracted the wary eye of senior Army officials.
“In the Army, reviewing decisions related to business practices is not uncommon,” he said. “The [inspector general’s] function is to conduct audits and make recommendations to the command to ensure appropriate stewardship of Army resources.”
Gift funds are valuable to West Point because the academy uses them to pay for semesters abroad, guest lecturers, cadet research, internships and other programs, Lt. Col. Wright said.
Although the report has raised questions about the academy’s handling of those funds, officials have yet to uncover any concrete “evidence of fraud, waste or abuse,” he said.
The report did find, however, that West Point knew that it was supposed to begin using the new system on Jan. 1, 2014, but chose not to abide by that directive.
Lt. Col. Wright defended that delay, noting that the academy has been struggling with the changeover.
“The transition, you know, we were granted about a year and that went through the end of December 2013,” Lt. Col. Wright said. “Admittedly, we’re a little bit behind schedule, but we’ve started ramping up the efforts.”
West Point is hoping to accomplish that goal by July 31, he said.
• Maggie Ybarra can be reached at mybarra@washingtontimes.com.
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